Jeff Duncan: “I rise today to speak on a couple of unrelated topics of national concern, related in some ways, unrelated in others…”

“I rise today to speak on a couple of unrelated topics of national concern, related in some ways, unrelated in others, but nonetheless very, very important topics. The first of these pertains to the millions of acres of which have burned and are burning at the present time in our western States. This is something that the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health of the Committee on Resources, which is one of the subcommittees on which I serve, heard about in one of the first hearings held in this Congress early in 1999, early last year. The hearing that we held was based on a 1998 GAO report that I do understand and have read that we were having warnings as early as 1993 about the potential effects of this problem. But in this hearing in 1999, we were told that there were some 40 million acres in our western States that were in immediate danger of catastrophic forest fire. We now have estimates, based on these latest fires, that over $10 billion worth of economic damage has been done thus far and that the costs to the Federal Government are going to exceed at least $1 billion and that if these fires keep burning and expanding, the costs may become even greater. The sad thing is that this is a problem that we not only knew about but that we could have easily done something about.”