A Report by a Panel of the

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

for the United States Congress and the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior

January 2004

CONTAINING WILDLAND FIRE COSTS:

ENHANCING HAZARD MITIGATION CAPACITY

PANEL

Frank Fairbanks, Chair

Allan V. Burman

Gail Christopher

Patrick J. Kelly

Lyle Laverty

Keith Mulrooney

Paul Posner

Charles Wise

Officers of the Academy

Carl W. Stenberg, III, Chair of the Board

C. Morgan Kinghorn, Jr., President

Valerie Lemmie, Vice Chair

Jonathan D. Breul, Secretary

Howard M. Messner, Treasurer

Project Staff

J. William Gadsby, Responsible Staff Officer

Bruce D. McDowell, Project Director

Ruth Ann Heck, Senior Consultant

Kathleen Hemenway, Senior Consultant

Charles V. Hulick, Senior Consultant

John Maupin, Senior Consultant

W. Patrick Nobles, Senior Consultant

Peter Ribble, Senior Consultant

Katherine M. White Turner, Consultant

Joseph P. Mitchell III, Research Associate

Jennifer Hardgrove Blevins, Research Assistant

June Psaltis, Intern

Natalia Shakirova, Intern

Martha S. Ditmeyer, Project Associate

The views expressed in this document are those of the Panel.

They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Academy as an institution.

National Academy of Public Administration

1100 New York Avenue, N.W.

Suite 1090 East

Washington, DC 20005

http://www.napawash.org/

First published January 2004

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 1-57744-101-X

Academy Project Number: 1951-004

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD.............................................................................................................................. iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................. v

ACRONYMS.............................................................................................................................. ix

PANEL REPORT

PANEL MESSAGE........................................................................................................................ 3

RECOMMENDATIONS.............................................................................................................. 8

EPILOGUE................................................................................................................................... 16

REPORT IN BRIEF

REPORT IN BRIEF ................................................................................................................. B-1

BACKGROUND REPORT

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION............................................................................................... 21

Origin of the Study..................................................................................................................... 21

Wildfire Hazard Mitigation Incentive Program............................................................................. 21

Sound Policy Context for Wildfire Mitigation Established............................................................ 22

Progress is Being Made....................................................................................................... 23

Methodology............................................................................................................................. 26

Scope of the Background Chapters............................................................................................ 27

CHAPTER 2: MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF WILDFIRE

HAZARD MITIGATION...................................................................................................... 29

Reducing Risk in Wildlands........................................................................................................ 30

..... Fuels Treatments................................................................................................................. 32

..... Interim Strategies................................................................................................................. 34

Reducing Risk in Communities................................................................................................... 35

..... Mitigation Activities............................................................................................................. 36

Performance Measures.............................................................................................................. 37

Financial Aid Programs.............................................................................................................. 39

..... Assistance to Fire Departments............................................................................................ 39

..... Community Assistance......................................................................................................... 41

..... FEMA’s Mitigation Programs.............................................................................................. 41

..... Other Programs................................................................................................................... 42

..... Biomass Utilization Funding.................................................................................................. 43

..... Possible Future Programs.................................................................................................... 44

Barriers to Success.................................................................................................................... 46

..... Workshop Concerns........................................................................................................... 46

..... Partnership Capacity Study.................................................................................................. 48

..... Challenges Associated with Federal-Aid Programs............................................................... 49

Chapter 3: MOBILIZING RESOURCES FOR WILDFIRE

HAZARD MITIGATION...................................................................................................... 51

The Geography of Landscape-Scale Mitigation.......................................................................... 52

Convening and Supporting Wildfire Partnerships......................................................................... 56

..... Collaborative Skills Required............................................................................................... 58

..... Workshop Advice............................................................................................................... 61

Science-Based Mitigation Strategy Supports Local Goals........................................................... 61

..... Risk and Vulnerability Assessment....................................................................................... 61

..... Mitigation Strategy............................................................................................................... 63

..... Performance Goals and Targets........................................................................................... 63

..... Current Capacity for Assessments and Strategies is Limited.................................................. 64

..... Political Will is Critical......................................................................................................... 67

Prioritized Work Programs Implement Strategy.......................................................................... 67

Performance Measurement Guides Strategy Revisions................................................................ 71

..... Measuring Performance on a National Level......................................................................... 71

..... Measuring State and Local Performance.............................................................................. 74

Opportunities to Build State and Local Capacity......................................................................... 74

..... Possible Funding Sources.................................................................................................... 75

..... Possible Administrative Improvements.................................................................................. 75

Development of One-Stop Websites.................................................................................... 77

..... Possible Legislative Changes................................................................................................ 79

Conclusion................................................................................................................................ 80

APPENDICES

Appendix A: Panel and Staff Listing........................................................................................... 85

Appendix B: Individuals Interviewed or Contacted.................................................................... 89

Appendix C: Highlights of Regional Workshops on Wildfire Hazard Mitigation and

..... Local Firefighting Capacity....................................................................................................... 105

Appendix D: Guide to Federal Aid for Wildfire Mitigation........................................................ 121

Appendix E: Wildfire Mitigation Assistance: Regional and State Grant Websites....................... 133

Appendix F: Western States Processes for Implementing the National Fire Plan

and the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy................................................................................ 143

Boxes, tables and figures

Table 1-1. Goals and Implementation Tasks Established by the 10-Year Comprehensive

Strategy Implementation Plan................................................................................................. 24

Table 2-1. Comparing Hazard Reduction in Wildlands and Communities......................................... 30

Table 2-2. Historical Fire Regimes by Condition Class—Nationally; All Cover Types..................... 31

Box 2-1. Biomass Utilization: The Market Aggregation Task........................................................... 33

Table 2-3. Opportunities Matrix..................................................................................................... 40

Box 2-2. New Mexico Company Combines Federal Funds to Utilize Biomass................................ 44

Box 3-1. Mobilization Capacity Model........................................................................................... 52

Box 3-2. California’s Organizational Structure for Wildfire Risk Mitigation....................................... 57

Box 3-3. Six Principles of Effective Consultation............................................................................. 58

Box 3-4. Principles for Federal Managers of Community-Based Programs...................................... 59

Box 3-5. Key Components for Successful Project Impact Communities.......................................... 60

Box 3-6. FEMA Requirements for State and Local Mitigation Plans................................................ 62

Box 3-7. Ruidoso Maps and Manages Fuel Reduction Treatments.................................................. 68

Table 3-1. Illustrative Multi-Party Projects: Placer County Fire Safe Alliance.................................. 70

Box 3-8. Forest Service Hits Barriers Working on Private Lands.................................................... 71

Table 3-2. Goals and Performance Measures Established in the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan................................................................................................................................................. 76

Figure 3-1. CPLFA Federal-Aid Process...................................................................................... 79

PANEL MESSAGE

In 2003, the nation witnessed another severe wildfire season, punctuated by the record-breaking devastation of nine major fires burning simultaneously in Southern California in the fall. As a result, suppression costs continued to rise. In 2002, several states had experienced the largest wildfires in their history, and now California has been added to the list of new records. This is not just an aberration. Catastrophic wildfires are occurring now in many states, year after year, as the build-up of forest fuels, drought, and insect damage have dramatically increased their frequency and severity.

As the wildland-urban interface continues expanding, the number of people, structures, and other properties at risk of catastrophic losses from wildfires is multiplying. Most experts expect this expansion to continue indefinitely if more effective countermeasures are not applied. This means that the efforts to reduce risk and preserve wildlands will depend increasingly on intergovernmental and public-private partnerships capable of reducing large-scale risks affecting multiple owners.

In many parts of the nation, the capacity of such partnerships to address such widespread risks is far from adequate. Although some states and community areas have increased their efforts and have brought together multiple organizations for this purpose, even those that have demonstrated the most progress do not presently possess the capacity to do enough mitigation fast enough to reduce risks on the large scale needed. The consensus of everyone we talked to is that the nation continues to lose ground to rising wildfire hazards in both the wildlands and communities, and the Panel agrees. The Panel finds that a substantially larger effort needs to be mounted, supported by additional funding.

The Panel has identified key capabilities that community-wide and statewide partnerships need in order to systematically and effectively reverse the growing risks facing the nation, and to tailor effective wildfire hazard mitigation programs to their own circumstances. The workshops and other site-specific research conducted by the Panel this year demonstrate that existing state and local groups are not adequately bringing together and coordinating the diverse wildfire hazard mitigation activities within their jurisdictions, as needed to yield the greatest possible benefits. Limitations associated with current skills, data, tools, and funding clearly show the need to improve state and local capacity to develop and implement large-scale, cost-effective, site-specific mitigation strategies. The nation urgently needs greater capacity in community-wide and statewide partnerships to address the burgeoning wildfire risks.

Two years ago, when Congress asked the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to fund a study by the Academy aimed at containing wildfire suppression costs, we prepared detailed cost reviews of six of the largest wildfires in 2001, and we reported to Congress and the land management agencies on several ways to contain the growth of suppression costs. We found that some money can be saved when fighting wildfires by making better use of local firefighting forces, being more efficient in purchasing equipment and services to fight fires, adopting more cost-effective suppression strategies, and taking other administrative steps. But clearly, the opportunities for big savings are in reducing wildfire hazards on a broad scale before a fire begins. Most incident commanders and others we talked to reported that their discretion to adopt more cost-effective suppression strategies was severely limited by political, citizen, and media pressures.

Existing federal policy calls for acting at what it calls the “landscape scale.” In that context, the landscape encompasses a whole ecological system regardless of the ownership lines and jurisdictional boundaries that divide it. The Panel endorses this landscape-scale approach.

What really stood out in our 2002 fieldwork was that forces already at work predetermine most of the suppression costs. These forces—in simplest terms—are drought, weather, and ignitions, which are mostly beyond our control, plus community vulnerability and fuels buildup in wildlands, which can be controlled. Three hazard-reducing actions can help control these latter risks and help contain future suppression costs. We have concentrated on these three opportunities for hazard reduction and cost containment:

1. Create fire-resistant communities and defensible spaces (places that are less prone to burn because of precautions taken ahead of time)

2. Create strategic fuel break systems that can be used to compartmentalize and dampen fire progression patterns across large expanses of wildlands, transforming them into more manageable fire control areas

3. Reduce heavy vegetative fuel loads and restore forests to healthy levels that permit successful initial attack, do not contribute to large uncontrollable fires, and help to avoid damage to communities, municipal watersheds, the environment, and other values at risk.

Each of these hazard reduction strategies is complex to implement. Their success requires science-based assessments, collaborative planning, and coordinated action by many different parties. Last year we recommended a more collaborative approach, and this year we have explored in greater detail what that approach would look like organizationally and operationally. In this report, we address interagency and intergovernmental collaboration, as well as public-private linkages, and how they can bring together all the stakeholders who are essential to success in a way that will best enable them to build the capacity they need to succeed.

It is urgent for the nation to get on with this hazard mitigation work. As we have gone around the country to look at existing conditions and get grassroots advice about what needs to be done, we found that communities are continuing to build into the wildlands faster than defensible spaces are being created around them, and faster than local governments are adopting and enforcing essential zoning and subdivision regulations, building codes, and other ordinances that would require fire-safe development. Vegetation also continues to grow faster than it is being thinned in many places, and not enough places are creating strategic fuel breaks. We can do better than this, and all the key players need to be involved.

The thrust of our report this year is to set forth a strategy to help build the statewide and community-wide capacities needed to expedite and tailor collaborative action among all the governmental and non-governmental partners who must work together effectively to reduce wildfire hazards.

Many treatment projects that are ready to implement are delayed by simple lack of funding, but others are delayed by lack of the administrative capacity needed to accomplish necessary planning, project development, prioritization, environmental review, permitting, and project management tasks. These tasks are essential to ensuring a steady flow of high-priority wildfire mitigation projects. Administrative capacity is also essential for tracking progress, adopting priorities, ensuring accountability for the use of federal funds, and enabling organizations to compete successfully for those funds.

Our research and workshops this year revealed a gathering frustration with the slow pace and difficulties involved in getting these things done. Our objective is to propose a realistic and effective way for parties to work together constructively and productively so the nation can get on top of this serious problem—and stop falling behind. We need to find a way to lift the planning and administrative burdens associated with wildfire programs off the implementers so they can be free to do the actual hazard mitigation jobs needed on the ground.

In this report, the Panel emphasizes the importance of reducing wildfire hazards with a graphic illustration based on our earlier fieldwork on six big wildfires. (See p. 7) We were told repeatedly, “Once the fire starts, you have no choice but to play the hand you’ve been dealt.” The illustration shows two poker hands. One is a winning hand with three aces; the other is a hand that cannot win. Wildfire hazard mitigation allows you to deal yourself the three aces you need to win. They are: (1) fire-resistant communities, (2) fuel breaks, and (3) reduced fuel loads. Without such mitigation, the nation can expect steadily climbing losses of lives, structures, local economies, and municipal watersheds—and continuing increases in suppression costs. With mitigation, losses can be expected to decline and suppression costs can be expected to fall.

To enable mitigation partnerships to become more capable of meeting these challenges, the Panel:

· Urges the Congress to fully fund the Community and Private Lands Fire Assistance (CPLFA) program authorized by the 2002 Farm Bill

· Endorses using CPLFA to provide continuing support to intergovernmental and public-private wildfire partnerships

· Urges Congress to declare its intent that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) hazard mitigation programs are expected to be available to help address wildfire hazards (along with other hazards being addressed through state and local all-hazard plans)

· Supports acceleration of the LANDFIRE hazard information program to supplement other performance measurement systems used to help improve capabilities for tactical firefighting, strategic mitigation of wildfire hazards, restoration of burned areas, and nationwide performance reporting on progress toward mitigating wildfire hazards

We also urge the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) and the federal agencies, including FEMA, to actively support intergovernmental and public-private wildfire partnerships in each state and U.S. territory for the wildfire hazard mitigation purposes set forth in this Academy report. This support should come from a combination of existing sources, including CPLFA, FEMA mitigation, state fire assistance, and National Fire Plan (NFP) programs. We continue to urge—as we did last year—the use of existing state, regional, and local institutions to the greatest extent possible to strengthen the capacity to mitigate wildfire hazards through appropriately tailored, site-specific actions. We also urge WFLC and the agencies to continue simplifying and facilitating access to and coordination of wildfire-related federal-aid programs.

With this combination of activities, involving multiple stakeholders, the Panel believes (1) the nation’s currently elevated levels of wildfire hazards can be reduced; (2) losses of life, property, natural ecosystems, and municipal watersheds can also be reduced; and (3) damage to rural and other economies can be limited. And—over time—suppression costs will drop.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR

BUILDING GREATER HAZARD MITIGATION CAPACITY

THROUGH EFFECTIVE WILDFIRE PARTNERSHIPS

The purpose of the following recommendations is to encourage fuller use of existing wildfire partnerships at statewide and community-wide levels; encourage the formation of additional partnerships where appropriate; and enhance the capacities of wildfire partnerships to more adequately perform the collaborative coordination, mobilization, and program tailoring tasks described more fully in the background chapters of this report. These partnerships are intended to bring together the numerous federal, state, local, tribal, and non-governmental parties that possess the diverse responsibilities and powers needed to systematically reduce wildfire hazards across all lands at “landscape scales.”

Three types of recommendations are presented. The first focuses on building the capacity of statewide and community-wide wildfire mitigation partnerships. The second aims to strengthen the Wildland Fire Leadership Council’s ability to support the wildfire partnerships more broadly. And the third seeks to facilitate access to and relieve the administrative burdens associated with the federal-aid programs supporting wildfire programs.

RECOMMENDATION 1: ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT STATEWIDE AND COMMUNITY-WIDE WILDFIRE MITIGATION PARTNERSHIPS

The Panel finds that wildfire mitigation partnerships exist in some places, but not others. Those that do exist frequently have limited funding and expertise, no clear framework within which to operate effectively, and no easy way to learn from each other.

1.A. The Panel recommends, therefore, that the Wildland Fire Leadership Council establish a framework of expectations to guide statewide and community-wide wildfire partnerships as they work to more effectively carry out state and local responsibilities for implementing the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan (10-Year Strategy). This framework should include criteria for establishing membership in the partnerships and identifying the boundaries and host agencies serving the partnerships’ needs. The framework should also identify capabilities needed by the partnerships and the products for which they would be responsible. Partnerships should be capable of producing the following products:

· Risk Assessment. These documents should measure existing wildfire hazards, the probability that wildfires will occur, and the values at risk of damage.

· Wildfire Hazard Mitigation Strategy. These documents should evaluate options for reducing hazards, reducing the probability of wildfires occurring, and limiting potential losses; and should delineate the most feasible and effective strategy for implementation.

· Implementation Program. These annually updated programs should identify, prioritize, and include approvals for comprehensive lists of mitigation projects and other activities best suited to implementing the strategy. The program should include projects by all partnership members designed to reduce excessive fuel loads, make communities safer, create defensible spaces and fuel breaks, utilize biomass, and more.

· Assistance to Implementation Groups. The “product” of this activity is technical assistance services to implementation groups in the partnership to get their projects approved, funded, and completed on time with reduced administrative burdens. The use of programmatic—rather than project-by-project—environmental reviews and assessments (already common at Interior) should be considered by the other partners.

· Project Tracking. Project tracking systems—including the National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS)— should show the current status of each project and activity in the Implementation Program, and be publicly accessible to allow all partnership members and others to see the actual pace of implementation and identify needs for adjustment.

· Performance Reporting. At least once every year, outcome-oriented performance measures should be publicly reported for use at community, state, regional, and national levels to gauge the success of wildfire hazard mitigation programs. These reports should be timed to assist the budget processes of the partnership members.

· Outreach. Public information and outreach to citizens and citizen groups should be provided to develop the strong citizen support needed to undergird effective regulations, budgets, and practices. Active engagement of local print and electronic media should be important elements of the effort, along with a speakers’ bureau and other similar activities.

The purposes of the partnerships are to more fully involve all the partners in mutually supportive actions for reducing hazards, protecting communities and the environment, accepting responsibility, and allowing greater use of well managed wildland fire, prescribed burning, and cost-effective suppression tactics.

Skills needed to successfully pursue these activities include a variety of program management skills, such as data collection, analysis, planning, meeting facilitation, dispute resolution, grant writing, fund raising, and clear communications with multiple audiences using presentation methods that are sensitive to the needs and perceptions of the various audiences. Mass media and public education strategies should be among the skills being promoted.

Chapter 3 provides a body of research to assist WFLC in collaboratively establishing the recommended framework for guiding statewide and community-wide partnerships. It also describes a methodology that state and local officials could use to designate needed partnerships.

1.B. Because national performance reporting is so difficult, and ultimately depends on a national baseline that is periodically updated, the Panel recommends that the Administration and Congress accelerate development of the LANDFIRE system. This vital system, which makes use of current remote sensing and computer enhancement technologies to produce nationwide estimates of acres in the three condition classes (hazard levels) of wildland fire regimes, has been under development for a number of years, but is only in a pilot-testing stage now. It still has a long way to go before it is usable nationwide. Yet it is an essential nationwide source of reliable and consistent baseline data for measuring whether the nation’s wildfire hazards are increasing or decreasing overall. Although a decision has been made recently to fund nationwide application of this technology, it will still take many years to become fully operational at the current pace, and its update cycle will be too infrequent to meet budget, planning and reporting needs.

1.C. The Panel recommends continued development of outcome-oriented performance measures that can be easily collected and effectively used by statewide and community-wide partnerships. LANDFIRE cannot be expected to serve all the performance reporting and management needs of the nation. Other performance measures based on established and improved national, state and local data systems will also be essential to add detail and timelines. In some places with fast-growing vegetation, maintenance of Class 1 conditions may be a high priority. The performance data should be based as much as possible on automated capture and use of data on governmental transactions, such as zoning and subdivision approvals, building permits and inspections, public works construction and maintenance, and burning permits. The Panel urges that these national, state and local data systems be GIS-compatible and consistent with LANDFIRE to the greatest extent possible. At the national level, one such system is the NFPORS. NFPORS is an interagency system designed to assist Interior, Forest Service, and state field personnel in managing and reporting accomplishments for work conducted under the National Fire Plan.

1.D. The Panel recommends that WFLC arrange for several statewide and community-wide wildfire partnerships to be financially and technically assisted in Fiscal Year 2004 to help them explore how the provisions of the WFLC partnership framework (Recommendation 1.A) can be implemented in different situations. FY 2004 funding for these explorations should be arranged by coordinating the use of funds from the Forest Service’s State Fire Assistance program, NFP funds from the Forest Service and Interior, and FEMA’s all-hazards Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) funds. A portion of the funds provided for these explorations should be used to document and share the lessons learned. The Panel’s workshop sites described in this report identify potential partnerships that could be explored for this purpose.

1.E. The Panel believes that the FEMA disaster mitigation programs are extremely important, and recommends that the Administration and Congress continue to support them. For wildfire hazard mitigation projects, FEMA funding criteria should give priority to projects developed collaboratively through wildfire partnerships consistent with state and local all-hazard mitigation plans.

1.F. The Panel also recommends that the Forest Service proceed as quickly as possible to finalize the regulations needed to administer the Community and Private Lands Fire Assistance program, and that the Administration and Congress work together to fund this program at its fully authorized level of $35 million in FY 2005 and subsequent years. The regulations for this program should be consistent with the WFLC framework for statewide and community-wide wildfire partnerships, and CPLFA funding should provide a steady foundation for supporting these partnerships and building their capabilities to perform the roles they are assigned. The Panel believes that a long-term partnership between the CPLFA and PDM programs would benefit both programs, and urges the agencies and WFLC to work together toward that goal. Although CPLFA is a Forest Service program only, the partnerships it supports should be thoroughly interagency and intergovernmental, and Congress should affirm this alignment in future appropriations and amendments.

The state implementation plan called for in the CPLFA draft regulations should be designed to become a key program coordination mechanism, and it should be utilized vigorously for that purpose. The projects and activities included in the state implementation plan should include, but not be limited to, proposed federal-aid projects and priorities; it should include all the projects and activities that the partnership’s federal, state, local and other members intend to pursue in implementing the overall wildfire hazard mitigation strategy. The performance reporting supported by CPLFA should include results of all efforts, not just CPLFA implementation projects (which may be only a small part of the total effort).

1.G. The Panel recommends that the wildfire partnerships give special priority to biomass utilization programs in states and community-wide areas where market conditions are holding them back. The potential for such programs to help pay for accelerated wildfire hazard reduction, to create local jobs, and to improve air quality should be fully explored and should be considered by the partnerships and federal agencies for high priority federal-aid funding.

1.H. The Panel recommends that WFLC establish a collaborative program to provide enhanced training curriculums, opportunities, and qualification guidelines to help wildfire partnership staffs and members gain the expertise and understanding of roles needed to make the partnerships succeed. This program should also provide for collecting and sharing best practices of wildfire partnerships, establishing self-assessment guidelines, and conducting peer-reviews of partnerships desiring them.

Some such training opportunities are currently available at Interior, and Interior is adding community-based partnership training to its prescribed fire training curriculum. Plans are also underway to revise wildland fire management courses to include stronger emphasis on community-based partnership skills. In addition, FEMA guidelines for community-based all-hazards pre-disaster mitigation planning are quite extensive. WFLC should build upon these efforts and involve FEMA appropriately.

RECOMMENDATION 2. INVOLVE FEMA’s MITIGATION DIVISION IN WFLC

2.A. The Panel recommends that WFLC invite and encourage FEMA’s Director/Administrator responsible for hazard mitigation programs to become a full member of the Council and play an active part in supporting implementation of the 10-Year Strategy, developing practices for wildfire partnerships to use that meet requirements of all the federal agencies, and sharing in funding partnership activities. In addition, WFLC should establish a work group to reconcile FEMA and land management agency planning requirements. To support this effort, the Panel recommends that the leaders and fire committees of the National Association of State Foresters and the National Emergency Management Association meet regularly with each other to consider wildfire matters of common interest.

This recommendation would add a high level official responsible for FEMA’s mitigation programs to the Council, in addition to FEMA’s current representative from the U.S. Fire Administration, and establish a supportive dialogue between state foresters and state emergency managers. It is not meant in any way to replace the important role the U.S. Fire Administration plays in WFLC.

One of the most urgent tasks to be accomplished by this new partnership with FEMA should be to avoid duplicative and inconsistent federal planning requirements for wildfire hazard mitigation. The Panel encountered such duplication during its fieldwork and found that it is causing concern. The Panel urges the agencies to remedy this situation as quickly as possible, recognizing that some of the responsibility resides at state and local levels.

2.B. The Panel recommends that Congress clearly declare its intent that FEMA hazard mitigation programs and funds not be excluded from use for wildfire hazard mitigation purposes on the basis that such activities are already funded by the federal land management agencies. This would resolve present uncertainties about the extent to which the use of FEMA funds to mitigate wildfire hazards would illegally augment activities also being funded by the land management agencies. The circumstances for using FEMA funds this way should be judged case-by-case, but this clarification would allow FEMA to collaborate with the land management agencies when justified.

RECOMMENDATION 3. FACILITATE FEDERAL AID FOR WILDFIRE PROGRAMS

The Panel recommends that the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (1) develop one or more one-stop websites to improve accessibility to and coordination of federal and related state aid for wildfire programs in each state and U.S. territory; (2) develop and deploy e-grant capabilities to automate grant applications, awards, reporting, management, and close-out for wildfire programs; (3) negotiate—within the limits of existing legislation—greater consistency among federal-aid wildfire programs in application and award dates, criteria for making awards, ability of the programs to be used together on the same project or program, and applicant ability to predict available funds; and (4) establish a process by which the priorities for federal-aid project approvals are set by the wildfire mitigation partnerships recommended in 1.A. The Panel also recommends that federal agencies accord highest priority for funding to federal-aid projects that (a) are ranked high by the wildfire partnerships; (b) target fire-prone areas where benefits would be greatest, such as Class 3 and 2 conditions in fire regimes 1-3, consistent with collaborative fuels treatment and WUI protection MOUs already approved by the federal land management agencies and intergovernmental partners; and (c) are supported by consistent state and local actions and investments. In addition, the agencies should fully use existing authorities to fund multi-year projects and use carry-over funds as appropriate to facilitate implementation of partnership-developed implementation programs.

Precedents exist to assist with these tasks. For example, the California Fire Safe Council recently launched a statewide online grants clearinghouse. It enables organizations within the state to access all the grant programs offered by state and federal agencies belonging to the California Fire Alliance by submitting a single concept paper outlining their needs. The single concept paper is then routed to the appropriate funder(s). In addition, Interior and the Forest Service are currently working with a contractor to revise the National Fire Plan website to include, among other enhancements, access to state programs and automated grant applications. Many wildfire grant programs have considerable latitude for administrative discretion. Nevertheless, legislative provisions may limit the degree to which cross-program consistency can be achieved without amendments to existing laws.

A summer 2003 survey of existing websites for wildfire programs by the Panel showed that improvements are needed to enhance the three major purposes of such sites:

1. Educational. Increase awareness of all sources of available assistance and related application procedures.

2. Administrative. Ease the administrative burden on applicants through streamlined electronic application and administrative processes.

3. Programmatic. Make better use of federal and state funds through a more coordinated project selection process based on collaboratively developed strategies and prioritized distribution of funds.

To make these websites fully functional for wildfire hazard mitigation purposes, they should also facilitate access to contractors qualified and authorized to provide materials and services needed to implement grant-funded projects. This topic is addressed in the Panel’s companion report, Containing Wildland Fire Costs: Improving Equipment and Services Acquisition, September 2003.

The improved one-stop websites should include the following features:

· Program List. A comprehensive list of all related federal-aid and state-aid programs for each of the four main purposes (local fire department assistance, wildfire hazard mitigation, wildfire hazard mitigation planning, and wildfire-related business development).

· Program Descriptions. Detailed program descriptions (including program purposes, examples of eligible and ineligible activities, matching requirements, and selection criteria) and instructions on who is eligible, how to apply, and application deadlines.

· Program Finder. An electronic checklist that helps applicants navigate the maze of programs and determine their eligibility.

· Easy Applications. Electronic application capability for all programs, including provisions for electronic signatures. (Non-electronic options, however, should be retained until all potential applicants acquire electronic capabilities.)

· Consolidated Applications. A single application for each of the four main purposes, coordinated administration of grants, and joint review that involves all grant-making agencies.

· E-Grants. Integrated electronic application, awards, reporting, and close-out capabilities. An e-grant example that could serve as a model is FEMA’s fire department assistance program, which is now almost completely automated.

· Application Data. Tools for sharing demographic information that applicants are asked to submit to the funding agencies when they apply for grants (a database common for all participating agencies), so that applicants do not have to spend unnecessary time and resources on finding and submitting this information more than once.

· Proposal Development. Links to other resources/programs that might be of help to applicants when they develop proposals (for example, information on other agencies involved in hazard mitigation at the federal/state/local level, federal/state/local priorities, planning process, and so on).

· Application Preparation. Assistance in preparing applications, including contact information for those providing such assistance.

· Links to Contractors. Links to websites providing electronic (and non-electronic) access to contractors qualified and authorized to provide materials and services needed to implement grant-funded activities.

Greater predictability in the timing and availability of federal fuels reduction and federal-aid funds is especially important to success in reducing wildfire hazards. For developing consistency among federal-aid applications to multiple agencies for related purposes, the state-plan concept used for many years in the nation’s surface transportation programs provides a model that is tied to relatively predictable schedules of project funding based on publicly disclosed information and collaboratively developed priorities.

The WFLC should give special attention to the funding availability issue. Distributing most of the available hazard mitigation funds to the state level by formula, and relying on a collaborative state process for making further allocations below that level, would assist greatly with predictability for potential grantees—even without additional money. The state process would incorporate the results of collaborative community-wide processes where they exist. These processes should be visible to applicants, and expectant grantees could participate in and/or watch the processes work. Funding formulas should be based on objective measures of wildfire hazards that need mitigation.

Achieving this degree of coordination will be difficult, and perfection may remain elusive. Appropriations timing in relation to varying hazard seasons, planning cycles, and grant award schedules in different agencies are bound to present significant challenges. Decision levels also vary significantly at present, with some grants awarded nationally, others regionally, and others at the state level. Progress in overcoming these difficulties may be slow, but the benefits of success could be significant.

EPILOGUE

The Panel’s 2003 wildfire studies were nearing completion when the massive Southern California wildfires broke out in October. The severity of these fires and their strong relationship to the central recommendations of this year’s study compelled the Panel to comment on their implications.

These fires began with three powerful, wind-driven wildfires on October 24^th. The most noted one at that time was in the foothills of the San Bernardino National Forest 50 miles east of Los Angeles. It required evacuation of several thousand people. Over the next eleven days, nine serious wildfires burned in six counties of Southern California stretching 180 miles from the Mexican border to north of Los Angeles; 22 people died, well over 3,500 structures were lost, and 800,000 acres burned. Governor Gray Davis declared these fires to be the most devastating in the state’s history. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated. The Cedar Fire in San Diego was the largest of the individual fires and also the largest in the state’s history. According to CNN, Governor Davis announced, “At the peak of the wildfires, there were more than 15,600 firefighters battling the flames, along with 1,900 fire engines, 203 water trucks, 43 air tankers and 105 helicopters.”

By the time the fires were contained on November 4th, 24,000 people were without electricity. Restoring service was expected to take several weeks, and officials worried that the next rain would bring serious flooding and mudslides. Following fires of this magnitude and intensity, damage from mudslides could easily reach millions of dollars. In fact, Christmas rains brought flash floods and massive mudslides to the fire-damaged San Bernardino Mountains—taking 16 lives. And as 2003 came to a close, the same area narrowly missed another gully washer. The aftermath dangers of these fires have not yet passed.

Interestingly, the Panel’s previous study had ended on a similar note. As it was being finalized, the 2002 fire season had become one of the largest in history, with several states experiencing their largest fires on record. And the Panel felt compelled to add an Epilogue. The Panel noted then:

These fires strongly reinforce the concern that drought, excessive fuel hazards, and human movement into the wildlands continue to threaten the nation’s communities, forests and fields, driving costs even higher. The 2002 fire season is more than a wake-up call. It is a painful reminder of the magnitude of the problem and the dire need for action.

The 2003 fire season reinforces this point. In addition, the anecdotal reports coming from the Southern California fires focus attention on two of the issues the Academy Panel studied this year—reducing or mitigating wildfire hazards before fires break out and organizing to make best use of local firefighting forces.

As the fires were raging, press reports surfaced about such topics as the differences in preparedness among county and other local fire departments in Southern California, and federal refusal of aid that California’s governor had requested to clear highly flammable trees killed by bark beetles. But the press also reported some successes, including a recently built subdivision that used the latest fire resistant techniques to survive the wildfires with little damage. The Panel’s 2003 reports address these issues.

This report, Enhancing Hazard Mitigation Capacity, urges the creation and effective staffing of wildfire partnerships to collaboratively mobilize all the many parties that must work together more urgently to successfully reduce wildfire hazards on a large scale. California’s network of Fire Safe Councils is working toward this goal, but is much newer and not nearly as well developed as the partnerships for fighting fires.

Our December 2003 report, Utilizing Local Firefighting Forces, urges all states and fire-prone communities in wildfire danger areas to qualify their local fire departments and leadership teams to take part effectively in wildfire incidents. During the big Southern California wildfires of 2003 numerous separate fires broke out on federal, state, and locally protected lands. Local forces responded actively to fires within their jurisdiction as well as on state and federal lands, and conducted mutual-aid efforts to support other local, state, and federal jurisdictions. California has one of the most fully integrated incident command systems in the nation, and most local firefighters there routinely participate seamlessly in it.

Both of these Panel reports urge the use of best practices learned from previous wildfire disasters, and offer specific recommendations for making wildlands as well as communities less vulnerable to catastrophic losses. The Panel continues to believe, as it did last year, that better coordinated response and hazard mitigation actions will provide the best prospects for reducing suppression costs in the long run.

The key message of both reports is to get better organized to take action across the boundaries of multiple agencies, governments, and landowners. Wildfires do not respect these boundaries. Unless those responsible for reducing wildfire hazards can work together more effectively, they are not likely to make headway against this massive problem. And many parts of the nation will continue to burn hotter and sustain more damage each year that experiences significant drought.

On December 3, 2003, President George W. Bush signed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. Many hope that this new law will materially accelerate the reduction of wildfire hazards in both communities and wildlands.

The act’s main title authorizes a very substantial increase in hazardous fuel reduction funds to $760 million per year. These funds could be used not only on federal lands administered by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, but also on state, local, tribal, and private lands. A provision is included to give priority consideration to non-federal lands identified in collaboratively developed community protection plans. Other titles of the act authorize additional funds for biomass utilization; watershed forestry in states and Indian reservations; inventorying, monitoring, and tracking the health of forests; and protecting healthy forests in a forest reserve program.

Authorizations for these activities total over $870 million per year, but no added appropriations are expected for them in Fiscal Year 2004. The Panel believes that the new authorizations could significantly contribute to implementation of the recommendations in this report, and supports appropriations consistent with them.

BACKGROUND

REPORT

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Multiple Dimensions of Wildfire Hazard

Mitigation

Chapter 3. Mobilizing Resources for Wildfire Hazard

Mitigation

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

ORIGIN OF THE STUDY

Since 2000, the Academy has been analyzing wildland fire policies and practices and recommending specific actions to improve them. Most recently, it examined the question of how to reduce the accelerating costs of wildfire suppression. The results of that effort, based on a study of six large wildfires, were released in the 2002 report, Wildfire Suppression: Strategies for Containing Costs. The central lesson learned from these case studies is that the main reason suppression costs are increasing is that wildfire hazards are increasing. Hazardous fuels are accumulating in the nation’s forests and rangelands while more people are moving into these areas. The Panel concluded, therefore, that the nation’s best opportunity to contain suppression costs is to increase the capacity to reduce the accumulation of hazardous fuels and to mitigate wildfire risks to communities.

The Appropriations Subcommittee for Interior and Related Agencies asked the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to jointly fund follow up efforts in 2003 to help implement certain Academy wildfire cost-containment recommendations. As part of that effort, this report develops and recommends enhanced state and local capacities to mobilize the resources needed to reduce wildfire hazards.[1]

WILDFIRE HAZARD MITIGATION INCENTIVE PROGRAM

The Academy’s 2002 report included several recommendations for improving state and community capacity to reduce wildfire threats. The key recommendation called for a new two-part (state and community) wildfire hazard mitigation incentive program designed to “build a multiparty public investment program” for wildfire hazard mitigation. This new program was to result from reexamining and reshaping the National Fire Plan (NFP) programs that provide assistance to non-federal parties.[2] The reshaped program would provide incentives at the state and local levels for a more collaborative approach to wildfire hazard mitigation. It would establish by statute the intergovernmental nature of the process, guard against federal agency dominance, and encourage use of cost-effectiveness criteria as a strong element in selecting projects. The program would also include a broad range of tools to meet the needs identified and prioritized in the collaborative planning process. Funding for implementation projects could come from federal, state, local, or other appropriate sources. This program would also be coordinated with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program (PDM).

At the core of the Panel’s recommendation was the realization that, in light of the nation’s severe and growing wildfire hazards, successful mitigation requires partnerships involving all levels of government, interest groups, and private citizens. The Panel envisioned collaboratively developed mitigation strategies, supported by science-based risk assessments, implemented by all parties in a mutually supportive manner, and guided by on-going performance assessments.

The Panel expected this approach to increase the effectiveness of fuels treatment and community mitigation projects being implemented nationwide, resulting in both short-term and long-term benefits. As discussed in last year’s report, the Panel viewed improved mitigation as the best means of reducing suppression costs. In the short-term, reduced fire hazards will result in smaller fires and reduced suppression costs on treated lands. In the longer term, reduced fire hazards will decrease the overall number of large, long-duration fires and contain suppression costs nationwide. But the Panel also recognized that the expected benefits of improved wildland fire mitigation are potentially much broader. Improved mitigation can result in decreased losses of lives, structures, business earnings, and cultural and historical values. Even more fundamentally, effective mitigation can help restore the nation’s wildlands to a more natural state and ensure healthier ecosystems.

SOUND POLICY CONTEXT FOR WILDFIRE MITIGATION ESTABLISHED

The Academy’s reports were developed in the context of a series of recent fire documents. The first of those documents was the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy (Fire Policy), which governs the wildfire mitigation activities of five federal land management agencies: the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service. Originally adopted in 1995, this interagency policy was expanded and reaffirmed in 2001. The Fire Policy represents a dramatic change in how the land management agencies view the role of fire in ecosystems: now they are expected not only to suppress wildfires when necessary, but also to use fire to improve ecosystem health and reduce catastrophic fire hazards. The policy recognizes that fire plays a valuable role in managing ecosystem health and reducing the risk of catastrophic fires. All land units with burnable vegetation are required to develop Fire Management Plans to govern their use of fire, consistent with their missions and long-range management plans.

In September of 2000, the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior issued a report to the President, Managing the Impact of Wildfires on Communities and the Environment. Responding to the disastrous fire season of 2000, this report made key recommendations that formed the foundation of the NFP. NFP goals include:

Improving fire preparedness
Restoring and rehabilitating burned areas
Reducing hazardous fuels
Assisting communities
Improving accountability

The agencies’ recommendations emphasized multi-jurisdictional, landscape-scale hazard mitigation efforts, and working directly with communities most at risk of wildfires to, among other things, expand education and risk mitigation activities.

Progress Is Being Made

Since the Fire Policy was reaffirmed in January 2001, significant progress has been made in establishing additional policies and procedures to move wildfire hazard mitigation into a broader arena of intergovernmental action. In August 2001, the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior joined the Western Governors Association, National Association of State Foresters (NASF), National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Intertribal Timber Council in adopting A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment: A 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy. And the following year, in May 2002, they adopted a companion document, the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan (10-Year Strategy), to establish a joint action plan.

The purpose of this pair of reports is to protect firefighters, citizens, communities, forests, and rangelands from the undesired effects of wildland fire by (1) improving fire prevention and suppression, (2) reducing hazardous fuels, (3) restoring fire-adapted ecosystems, and (4) promoting community assistance. In order to achieve these four goals, the 10-Year Strategy establishes a collaborative framework that outlines responsibilities for planning, prioritizing actions, implementing projects, ensuring timely decision-making, tracking performance, and communicating accomplishments to the public. It establishes implementation outcomes, performance measures, and priority tasks for each of the four goals. For each priority task it identifies a collaboration level and lead collaborator.

Table 1-1 shows the implementation timeline established for each major task in 2002. The federal interagency Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC)—recommended by the Academy in December 2001, and established in 2002 by the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to facilitate consistent implementation of the Fire Policy—receives regular quarterly reports on this schedule of activities, acts on task results when ready, and adjusts the schedule as necessary. As of October 2003, 56 percent of the tasks were complete; 14 percent were overdue; and 30 percent were in progress.

The fundamental purpose of the partnerships recommended in the present January 2004 Panel report is to provide more capable collaborative mechanisms to facilitate and build upon the implementation of the 10-Year Strategy.

Table 1-1. Goals and Implementation Tasks Established by the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan
GOALS AND IMPLEMENTATION TASKS ADOPTED	TARGET DATES FOR COMPLETION
GOALS AND IMPLEMENTATION TASKS ADOPTED	2002 A S O N D	2003 J F M A M J J A S O N D	2004 J F M A M J J A S O N D
*All Goals:* Establish baselines and intergovernmental reporting processes for measuring progress toward goals		x
*Goal 1:* Improve Fire Prevention and Suppression
-Improved preparedness-planning model		x
-Improved firefighter management training			x
-Assess and report on local wildfire suppression capabilities		x
-Minimum-impact suppression training		x
-Fire prevention plan template		x
-Report WUI community protection progress	x	x	x
*Goal 2:* Reduce Hazardous Fuels
-Use Joint Cohesive Strategy (Draft) as basis for all fire management plans (FMP)		x
-Develop updated FMP template for use by all parties		x
-Internet information system identifying all funding opportunities		x
-Internet information system on status of wildfires and wildfire hazard conditions		x
-Intergovernmental collaboration process for annual selection of fuel treatment projects		x
-Recommend streamlined regulatory review processes		x
*Goal 3:* Restore Fire-Adapted Ecosystems
-Intergovernmental training and guidance for rapid assessment and stabilization of burned lands			x
-Improve products for restoration and rehabilitation treatments	------------------	--------------------------------------	---------------------------------------
-Intergovernmental collaboration process for annual selection of ecosystem restoration projects			x
*Goal 4:* Promote Community Assistance
-Internet information system on utilization of fuel treatment and ecosystem restoration by-products			x
-Consistent and effective federal procedures for procurement, contracting, grants, and agreements to support hazardous fuel reduction, restoration, and rehabilitation projects		x
-Incorporate livestock grazing practices	------------------	--------------------------------------	---------------------------------------
-Apply local land use plans and ordinances	------------------	--------------------------------------	---------------------------------------
-Criteria for prioritizing communities at risk		x
-Maintain accurate list of communities at risk		x------------------	---------------------------------------
-Technical assistance to promote commercial use of small-diameter materials		x
-MOU with NASF to promote Firewise more broadly	x

Source: A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment: 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy Implementation Plan, May 2002; pp. 10-16.

The 10-Year Strategy’s collaborative framework uses a three-tiered organizational structure:

The Local Level. This level involves tribal representatives, field representatives of federal and state agencies, local governments, landowners, and community-based groups with a demonstrated commitment to the strategy’s four goals. These stakeholders are the primary source of planning, project prioritization, and resource allocation and coordination at the local level.

The State, Regional, and Tribal Level. This level involves all relevant land management, wildland fire response, and regulatory agencies, plus other interested parties. These stakeholders are responsible for addressing geographically distinct needs and issues, facilitating communication between local and national levels, and making decisions about resource allocation and prioritization.

The National Level. WFLC is expected to provide coordinated policy direction for the federal land management agencies. While performing this role, WFLC collaborates with other federal regulatory agencies and other stakeholders (states, tribes, and local governments) that have wildfire and/or land management responsibilities. WFLC meets quarterly to address national policy, programmatic, resource allocation, prioritization, budget, and finance issues.[3]

In March 2002, the Interior Department and Forest Service initiated a collaborative procedure for selecting fuel treatment projects on federal lands. Its main purpose is to establish September 1^st of each year as the date by which the agencies will select fuel treatment projects for the next budget year.[4] It specifies the process steps, responsible organizational levels, and associated timeframes to be used.

In January 2003, the federal land management agencies, along with NASF and NACo, adopted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to more fully operationalize the agencies’ earlier fuels treatment agreement.[5] It establishes an intergovernmental process within which the parties can collaborate on an annual fuels treatment program within their respective jurisdictions. By May 1^st of each year, the parties have agreed to develop a program for the next federal fiscal year that does the following:

Actively manages acres in the wildland-urban interface and acres outside the interface in Condition Classes 2 and 3;

Prioritizes treatment of acres within states that are actively incorporating state and tribal projects into the joint work program;

Takes into account multi-year landscape-level projects across ownerships;

Aligns with the President’s Budget and makes timely adjustments based on the Congressional appropriation and final agency budget allocations;

Considers long-term investments and sequencing of projects;

Builds on prior-year programs to ensure that projects are strategically located and implemented across the landscape.

As a first step, WFLC is expected to establish a national workgroup—composed of the Forest Service and Interior Interagency Fuels Team, NASF, and NACo representatives—to oversee the implementation of this MOU. The workgroup will also monitor progress and effectiveness consistent with the 10-Year Strategy and make recommendations for any necessary modifications to the agreement.

Coincident with national policy directives, a wide variety of partnerships have gotten underway, and progress has been made in implementing wildfire mitigation projects in some states, counties, and communities-at-risk. In many areas, stakeholder councils that are both community-based and interagency have taken lead roles in mitigation activities, including homeowner education, treatment projects, green waste disposal programs, building code reform, and so forth. For the most part, however, these efforts are not grounded in the kind of all-inclusive partnership; comprehensive, cross-jurisdictional strategy; and coordinated resource-base that would enable them to make progress at a sufficient rate to achieve timely landscape-scale protection for communities and other assets at risk. Participants uniformly find that progress is much too slow to keep ahead of increasing hazards.

Currently, the nation is at a crossroads. Recent fire activity has brought the reality of the wildfire threat into the nation’s consciousness. At the national level, policies and procedures exist—and are being further developed. They hold promise for reducing that threat. However, they do not answer critical questions about how these national efforts can be translated into effective actions on the ground by all the responsible parties. The Panel’s 2002 recommendations, and the additional recommendations in this report, are intended to help answer these operational questions and lay out a strategy to effectively implement wildfire hazard mitigation throughout the country.

METHODOLOGY

When the Panel convened in January 2003, its original intent was to recommend a specific legislative package that could be submitted to Congress to establish the wildfire hazard mitigation program recommended in the Panel’s 2002 report, as described above.

To solicit advice on formulating this legislation, the Panel sponsored day-and-a-half workshops in four locations: (1) Flagstaff, Arizona; (2) Boulder, Colorado; (3) Bend, Oregon; and (4) Palm Coast, Florida. Participants were key stakeholders from the state, federal land units, local governments, and community associations.[6] Academy Panel and staff representatives also participated in the National Fire Safe Council Conference in Tahoe City, California, and the annual conference of the Northeastern Area Association of State Foresters in Hartford, Connecticut. Attendees were government officials from all levels, interest group representatives, and private landowners. Appendix C provides more detail on the information obtained from the workshops and the California and Connecticut meetings. An Academy Panel member and the project director also participated in the National Association of State Foresters’ annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, in September 2003. They briefed the state foresters on the Panel’s ideas for building state and community capacity, and answered questions.

In addition to workshops and meetings, the Panel explored alternatives by:

— Sponsoring three briefings for interested national organizations to receive feedback on the proposal and to discuss specific issues, including those related to the federal-aid system and one-stop websites. Participants included professional associations, environmental groups, and industry groups.

— Interviewing officials from FEMA, the Forest Service, Interior agencies, and NASF.

— Soliciting public feedback on several issue papers that were published on the Academy’s website.

— Sponsoring a joint meeting between FEMA mitigation officials and the federal land management agencies to explore how to involve FEMA’s Mitigation Division in the Wildland Fire Leadership Council and how to coordinate existing grant programs more effectively.

— Reviewing background and research reports.

Feedback from the workshops and meetings turned the Panel away from the idea of new legislation, which raised many concerns. In response, the Panel turned more toward exploring ways to maximize the opportunities that exist in current programs and minor legislative amendments to achieve better focused and more effective performance.

SCOPE OF THE BACKGROUND CHAPTERS

Chapter 2 describes the needs and tools for reducing wildfire hazards in wildlands and communities, the need to develop a wildfire hazard inventory to monitor whether hazards are increasing or decreasing, opportunities provided by federal-aid programs to enable states and localities to play larger roles, and challenges states and communities face in trying to improve and expand their mitigation efforts. Chapter 3 presents the Panel’s vision for how all the stakeholders can work more collaboratively in states and community-wide areas to mobilize resources more effectively, by jointly assessing their wildfire risks, implementing mitigation projects, and assessing progress.

Table 2-1. Comparing Hazard Reduction in Wildlands and Communities

Location of Hazard Reduction	Mitigation Activities	Project Sponsors	Possible Measures of Progress
Wildlands	Mechanical thinning, prescribed burns, managed natural fires; developing uses for biomass	Federal and state land managers, large private landowners; with input from others	Number of acres with improved condition as a result of treatment
Communities	Homeowner education, codes and ordinances, vegetation management	Local governments, fire departments, home-owners, community associations, businesses, others	Property conditions improved and values protected

In both cases, coordinated and concerted effort is required to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire and its associated costs. It is also essential for a high level of effort to be maintained over time, because vegetation grows back; improved conditions must be maintained or they will relapse. In addition, populations are not static. Many communities have high turnover rates or are rapidly growing, meaning there are always new homeowners to educate and motivate. Coordination can help prioritize and facilitate resources, make best use of available federal and state aid, and encourage supportive private-sector efforts.

This chapter discusses the range of possible mitigation approaches and the players who can implement them in wildlands and communities. It presents information on how those approaches are being used in some of the areas where the Academy conducted workshops in 2003. It also identifies strategies and opportunities that can speed up progress and make better use of the various federal-aid programs available for implementing mitigation activities, and discusses some of the barriers to successfully improving and expanding mitigation efforts.

Reducing Risk in Wildlands

The objective in wildlands is to reduce artificially high levels of vegetative fuels that can support unnaturally intense and severely damaging fire. Each ecological system has a historical fire regime by which its wildfire hazard condition can be measured. This “condition class” measure documents the difference between the historically natural fire adaptation and the current condition. Class 1 is natural, while Classes 2 and 3 indicate relatively greater departures from natural fire adaptation. To lower the risk of catastrophic fire in wildlands, it is necessary, in simplest terms, to move fire condition classes from 3 to 2 to 1.

· Condition Class 1. Fire regimes[8] in this condition class are within historical ranges. Vegetation composition and structure are intact, so the risk of losing key ecosystem components due to wildfire is relatively low.

· Condition Class 2. Fire regimes in this condition class have been moderately altered from their historical range by either increased or decreased fire frequency, so there is a moderate risk of losing key ecosystem components.

· Condition Class 3. Fire regimes in this condition class have been significantly altered from their historical return interval. Vegetation composition, structure, and diversity have been significantly altered. The risk of losing key ecosystem components from fire is high. In many cases, these lands are at serious risk for ecological collapse.

Table 2-2 contains estimates of the amounts of land in each condition class by the various types of historical fire regimes.

Table 2-2. Historical Fire Regimes by Condition Class—Nationally; All Cover Types*

Historical Fire Regime

Class 1

Low Risk

Class 2

Moderate Risk

Class 3

High Risk

Total Acres

Acres/

Row %

Acres/

Row %

Acres/

Row %

I

176 million

41%

175 million

41%

77 million

18%

429 million

193 million

57%

133 million

40%

10 million

336 million

III

128 million

43%

112 million

38%

54 million

18%

294 million

53 million

43%

35 million

29%

35 million

28%

123 million

49 million

72%

14 million

20%

5 million

67 million

Total

598 million

48%

470 million

38%

182 million

15%

1.3 billion

Source: Historical Fire Regimes by Current Condition Classes, Version 2000. http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/fuelman/data_summary_tables.pdf

*Cover types included: forests, grasslands, wetlands, desert/other shrub, alpine tundra. Not included: agriculture, barren, water, and urban/development/agriculture.

Note: The five fire regimes and three condition classes included in this coarse-scale analysis provide a comprehensive approach to understanding key characteristics of different ecosystems. However, because it is highly simplified and generalized, a more detailed analysis using finer-scale fire regime condition class data should be used by land and forest managers when planning for particular forests and grasslands.

The departure from the historic pattern of each fire regime is determined by the number of missed fire return intervals. For example, some ecosystems are characterized by low intensity surface fires every 0-35 years (e.g. southeastern longleaf pine forests); others by high intensity crown fires every 35-100+ years (e.g. coniferous forests of southern California). Decades of fire suppression have altered the natural pattern of fire in many places, resulting in a hazardous buildup of fuels that, when ignited, can result in catastrophic fire. However, some forests, such as the coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest, and most spruce, fir and hemlock forests, have been largely unaffected by fire exclusion, and therefore catastrophic fire risk is low.

By effectively managing fuel levels, fire severity may be limited and the frequency of fire returned to natural conditions. This is accomplished primarily through mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and management of natural fires to get fuel reduction benefits. Although this seems simple in theory, it is difficult and expensive to achieve in practice.

Fuels Treatments

Thinning can help to reduce unwanted overgrowth by cutting, chipping, piling, and removing small trees (usually less than 9 inches in diameter) and dead fuels. Thinning can help to remove fuel ladders that could carry fire up into the canopy, initiating damaging crown fires. It can also decrease susceptibility to drought stress for the remaining trees. In addition, thinning can reduce or modify surface fuels before prescribed burning is conducted, which is especially useful in environmentally sensitive areas, or in instances when excessive buildup of fuels makes prescribed burning hazardous.

Utilization of biomass and small-diameter timber products of thinning treatments is an economic and environmental benefit that should be pursued to produce revenue and funding for more projects, as well as job opportunities. These materials can be used to manufacture products such as particle-board, pulp chips, mulch, compost, and landscaping material, or to generate energy. Small-diameter trees can also be used to produce such products as furniture, fence posts, and firewood. Currently there are only a few processing plants that can use such material, so transportation costs are often high. And in many areas, the supply of materials is too small or unpredictable to attract investments in additional plants. However, in areas where large and steady amounts of thinning are needed, a large enough guaranteed supply of small-diameter material could be developed to support new or reopened small-scale production facilities and lower transportation costs. And, technologies for small-scale production are becoming increasingly available. (See Box 2-1 on following page.)

Prescribed fires can be managed to yield important benefits for ecosystem health and public safety. They can reduce the hazard of catastrophic wildfires by reducing fuels and restoring historic fire regimes. Allowing natural fires to burn (with careful oversight) can provide similar benefits for certain fire-adapted ecosystems, such as ponderosa pine in the Interior West, or most of the eastern hardwood forests. Such ecosystems need fire to release seeds from cones, and/or to remove understory growth and invasive species. This approach can be used when fire poses minimal threat to communities and other values to be protected. It may be especially appropriate in wilderness areas where the ecosystems are closer to their natural state.

Box 2-1. Biomass Utilization: The Market Aggregation Task

Because of unpredictable supply, investment in businesses and infrastructure to make use of biomass is risky. However, some areas are working to change this.

The Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, for example, is administering the Central Oregon Partnerships for Wildfire Risk Reduction (COPWRR), a regional multi-stakeholder project aimed at increasing fuel treatment activities and increasing the utilization of fuel treatment by-products. One of COPWRR’s initiatives is a pilot project to help achieve predictability and stability of small-diameter timber and biomass supply. Such a “levelized” supply would be necessary to justify and support investments in technologies and businesses that would use the biomass. The specific goals of the project are to:

1. Develop public land management capacity to engage in intra-regionally coordinated planning between and among National Forests, Ranger Districts, and BLM Resource Areas for small-diameter supply based on longer-term resource planning processes.

2. Develop the organizational support within public land management agencies for supplying small diameter material on a levelized basis.

3. Develop the stakeholder and community agreement required to achieve levelized supply.

4. Use the demonstration of levelized small-diameter supply from public lands to support sensitivity analyses and catalyze private investment in identified products and technologies.[9]

The COPWRR efforts will be coordinated with a similar project being pursued in Arizona by the Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership, called the Coordinated Resource Offering Protocol.

On a smaller scale, the Sunriver Resort community in Bend, Oregon, has a biomass utilization project that involves multiple cooperators and some federal funding. The Deschutes County Soil Conservation District secured a National Fire Plan grant to help develop this demonstration. It combines the resort company’s operation of the sewage treatment plant and two golf courses with the homeowner association’s program of brush clearing and disposal. Before the project began, the homeowner association cleared brush from the community’s common areas, collected brush cleared from individual homeowners, took all the material to a nearby meadow, and burned it. Now the association chips the material and delivers it to the resort’s sewage treatment plant for use in composting sewage sludge. The resort uses some of the compost on its golf courses and sells some back to the homeowners association and individual property owners for use as fertilizer and mulch. The project reduces air pollution and homeowner complaints about burning, and enriches the naturally poor soils in the area.

In the White Mountains in Arizona, individuals are calculating how many tons of biomass could be generated annually within a 30-mile radius, and allocating tonnage among businesses. This assures businesses of a steady supply, and calculating supply within a specific radius assures that transport costs will not be prohibitive.

Because no single treatment is appropriate in all situations, fuels treatments should be guided by systematic strategic plans that specify where the treatments are needed, what mix of methods is optimal for the specific types of forests and grasslands, and how the site should be maintained in the future. The development and implementation of such a plan requires multi-level interagency cooperation. This may include one or more federal land management agencies, state foresters, or land managers as implementers, with input from local interests such as universities, city and county governments, community associations, businesses, and others. Cross-boundary coordination is essential to the effectiveness of treatments, since wildfires do not respect property boundaries.

Measures of progress might include the percentage of area appropriately treated, percentage of land changed from higher to lower condition classes through treatment, or percentage of land maintained in Condition Class 1 through treatment. Clearly, however, mitigation of wildfire hazards is a long-term goal that involves millions of acres. Interim strategies are needed to limit the potential consequences of wildland fire and ameliorate conditions in the near-term.

Interim Strategies

The Quincy Library Group, an organization of industry professionals, environmentalists and concerned citizens addressing issues concerning the Lassen, Plumas, and Tahoe National Forests in California, adopted the concept of a network of defensible fuelbreaks in 1994. The fuelbreaks are quarter-mile strips of forest thinned from below to eliminate fuel ladders, which contribute to high-intensity crown fires. The strips are located, where possible, along existing roads, and form a network that reflects the locations of high fuel concentrations and assets of high value. This type of strategy is based on research showing that the spatial pattern of fuels treatments is as important—indeed, more so in most cases—as the treatment itself. If treatments are done randomly, without regard to their spatial pattern, future wildfires will just go around the treated areas. Technically, parallel strips do the best job of reducing future wildfires, but this is an impractical strategy due to considerations such as land ownership, watershed concerns, and wildlife protection. Given that partial overlap (a modified parallel strip strategy) is practical and provides immediate benefits even when small fractions of a landscape are treated, this is the best strategy to use.[10]

The Quincy Library Group planned their area to develop the network of fuelbreaks over a period of four years. The average area of fuelbreak-surrounded forest was planned to be 10,000 to 15,000 acres.[11] The strategy was implemented with limited funding to help manage the intensity of fires, limit their spread, and increase the efficiency of fire suppression efforts, and the results were described in a pictorial workbook that shows the benefits during actual fires.[12] It is an

approach that partitions the forest to limit damage from a single ignition, and prevents separate fires from converging and becoming a massive, uncontrollable blaze.[13]

For creating fuelbreaks along roads, the following type of project might help to speed the process, both by leveraging additional funding and by reducing the number of environmental reviews. In some states, departments of transportation are working with wildlife agencies and environmental groups to mitigate the anticipated impacts of transportation projects. Under the Endangered Species Act, federal agencies must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to ensure that their actions do not harm threatened or endangered species or their habitat, and any action that unavoidably does so may be permitted only if the permittee mitigates the impacts. In Colorado, the state department of transportation is working with the Federal Highway Administration, USFWS, Colorado Division of Wildlife, and the Nature Conservancy to mitigate the anticipated impacts of the 20-year state transportation plan on threatened and endangered prairie species. Rather than mitigate for each project separately (each time invoking the environmental regulatory process, and each time conserving a small patch of land), the Shortgrass Prairie Initiative allows for a single environmental review, and will mitigate in advance of the impacts, conserving thousands of acres of habitat. Such programmatic environmental approvals are time consuming and complex, but allow related administrative processes and issues to be dealt with once, increasing efficiency, and allow for the evaluation of cumulative impacts, resulting in a more complete and accurate analysis. The Nature Conservancy was awarded a $5.5 million contract to secure the actual acreage for this initiative and manage it in perpetuity for prairie species.[14]

This type of partnership could serve as a model for wildfire mitigation: wildfire cooperators could partner with departments of transportation to secure programmatic environmental approvals and do thinning along roads to create more effective fuelbreaks using transportation funds. This innovative use of programmatic approvals and financing by other government agencies might help to speed the partitioning process.

In the case of interim strategies such as these, a different set of performance measures would be required that reflect the percent of baseline wildland acres partitioned, rather than the percent of acres treated to specified condition classes.

REDUCING RISK IN COMMUNITIES

The wildland-community interface is ever expanding. More and more people are moving to homes and communities that are in or near forests that present significant wildfire risks. It is not just the border of a city or suburban tract that is vulnerable, but also the municipal watersheds, the long-distance electric lines that transport vital power, and other scattered facilities and homes. The presence of this interface increases firefighting costs dramatically, and endangers residents, homes and other buildings, economic stability, and public safety. If state and local governments continue to permit such development, the way to avoid the added costs and dangers of catastrophic loss is to act before fire strikes to make these developments less hazardous and more defensible.

Mitigation Activities

At the community level, many mitigation tools are available and many stakeholders are involved. Counties and cities can employ land use plans, zoning and subdivision regulations, site-plan reviews, impact fees, building codes, and biomass recycling to lower community wildfire risks and help finance the effort. Community associations that govern many developments under contractual agreements with the homeowners can educate the homeowners, and incorporate covenants, conditions and restrictions in community by-laws to achieve these same goals. Local fire departments increasingly are thinning, clearing, and conducting prescribed burns on public lands, as well as on private lands where the owners consent. Businesses offer contract services to perform such work, and utilize biomass from treatments through recycling, manufacture, or energy production. Some examples of these wildfire hazard reduction activities follow.

The Firewise educational program raises the awareness of property owners about fire hazards in communities at risk and in wildland areas. It is sponsored by the Forest Service (USDA FS), Department of the Interior (DOI), and FEMA, in cooperation with the insurance industry and others; is overseen by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG); and is administered by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Firewise encourages collective responsibility and a proactive approach to fire protection in communities, through a commitment to wildfire prevention planning. This planning includes land development and building codes, such as NFPA 1144 (299) and the model 2003 International Urban-Wildland Interface Code developed by the International Code Council, as a refinement of the Urban-Wildland Interface Code previously developed by the International Association of Fire Chiefs. These codes incorporate Firewise principles, and have provisions addressing fire spread, accessibility, defensible space, water supply, building materials, and other standards for developments constructed near wildland areas. These provisions are all intended to help reduce the risk of loss from wildfire.

The voluntary, information-based approach of Firewise and other such programs is an important part of the solution. However, a large gap often exists between knowing about practices to protect homes and taking action. One player that has potential to motivate voluntary action is the insurance industry. For example, in six western states State Farm has begun surveying homes in areas vulnerable to wildfire. Policyholders will have up to two years to create defensible space in accordance with the company’s recommendations.

The use of codes, ordinances, and zoning is a key element to preventing increased wildfire hazard as communities develop. Some communities have adopted official codes and ordinances to make fire prevention practices mandatory. For example,

The City of Boulder, Colorado, has banned wood shake roofs.

The City of Flagstaff and Coconino County, Arizona, both require builders of new subdivisions and individual homes to submit plans for wildfire risk mitigation and emergency response. The Flagstaff Fire Department also works with builders to develop Forest Stewardship Plans, and the City requires fire-resistant roofs. A regional plan also requires vegetation management on ridges and steep slopes.

In San Diego County, California, one local fire protection district has developed ordinances requiring non-combustible roofing, interior sprinklers, 100 feet of clearance around structures, 30 feet of roadway clearance to accommodate fire engines, and clearance of all dead and dying trees. These requirements mirror and go beyond those required at the county level, which in turn go beyond requirements imposed at the state level for areas over which the state has fire protection responsibility.

It is important to note that enforcement of such ordinances is essential to their effectiveness.

Some communities that resist certain codes and ordinances have used other means to reduce wildfire hazards. Colorado Springs, Colorado, for example, has used peer pressure to encourage voluntary activities by homeowners. The fire department did a fire risk assessment of all the lots in the city, and posted it on a publicly accessible website. Homeowners who take steps to lower the risk can request a new assessment, and have the website changed to reflect the results. Progress has been made, as neighbors encourage each other to take action.

In communities at risk, as in wildlands, the overall goal is to reduce wildfire hazard, but progress will be measured differently. Cooperators will need to measure such variables as properties protected with defensible space, buildings with fire-retardant construction, infrastructure assets protected, parks maintained in fire-safe condition, and so on. For FEMA, they will also need to measure the community asset values protected.

PERFORMANCE MEASURES

To keep track of progress being made to reduce wildfire hazards, it is necessary to adopt and report on performance measures collaboratively, at all levels. Cooperators must monitor performance not only in terms of how well projects and activities are being carried out, but also in terms of the extent to which hazards are actually being reduced on a “net” basis, year-to-year. In general, performance measures should meet three criteria in order to effectively demonstrate progress (or lack thereof):

Performance measures should track progress relative to a goal. That is, they should allow stakeholders to compare progress with what needs to be done. Instead of just reporting the number of acres treated by condition class, for example, stakeholders should measure these acres as a percent of what needs to be treated within a condition class.

Performance measures should allow decision-makers to assess net impact. They should focus not just on the impact of specific hazard reduction activities, but also on the overall progress being made, and recognize that as some areas are being mitigated, others may be degrading, or additional hazards may be getting created.

Performance measures should assess progress across all lands, not just federal lands. Wildfire does not respect political or ownership boundaries. Performance measures should allow stakeholders to assess the progress of the community, the state, and the nation as a whole.

The ultimate goal of mitigation activities in wildlands and communities at risk should be a net reduction of hazards that is maintained over time: overall wildfire risk should be decreasing, not increasing. At this point, it is the perception of most observers that hazards are being created faster than they are being mitigated, even with all the activities currently being undertaken. A reliable wildfire hazard baseline inventory is needed to allow an accurate national assessment of the “true risk” and a more effective assessment of the benefits of various mitigation activities. True risk can increase or decrease as a result of numerous natural and human-caused factors, and to accurately assess the results of mitigation actions, these factors need to be accounted for. For example, the risk on some wildlands could increase, despite being treated, if there is a severe drought. A baseline inventory would weight the major elements of wildfire risk—such as climate, topography, and vegetation characteristics (e.g. fuels levels)—in accord with their relative importance. If the inventory were increasing, this would indicate that wildfire hazards were also increasing, and vice versa.

An inventory that is usable at a community level is not available now, because we have only coarse-scale data (1 square kilometer resolution) of condition class on a national level, and that data is not kept current (the most recent available is from 2000).[15] It is vitally important that this data be current, and be made available at a much finer scale for use by persons developing and monitoring the effects of wildfire hazard mitigation programs.

In 2003, an interagency committee consisting of representatives of the five land management agencies and the Nature Conservancy developed “train-the-trainer” sessions to bring techniques of evaluating condition class to the field level. Over 100 people attended the November 2003 session in Tucson, Arizona, and another session is planned for Tallahassee, Florida, in February 2004. Fuels treatment specialists and ecologists—primarily federal employees—from all over the country attend the sessions. Over the next several years, this training will enable the general coarse data to be refined in a consistent manner at a project level, as those who have been trained instruct others in the techniques. This level of data will be much more useful for planning projects and monitoring wildland fuel conditions. Also, the committee has recently decided to have the University of Idaho develop an online interactive program and/or CD-ROM to teach the methodology.[16] In addition, several states are creating their own databases, and a more adequate national database is being developed on a pilot basis.

Using whatever resources are available, community partnerships need to construct and implement their own performance measures to guide their programming.

FINANCIAL AID PROGRAMS

Getting all this work done requires financing. The opportunities matrix (Table 2-3) shows the major federal-aid programs currently available to support state, local, and other non-federal partners in wildfire programs, and the general purposes for which they may be used. In this table, we introduce a new term: “mitigation mobilization.” This concept involves collaborative risk assessment, project prioritization and implementation, and results monitoring across boundaries on a landscape scale. It is discussed in depth in Chapter 3. A discussion of the programs that address hazard mitigation issues follows the table below. Appendix D provides additional detail and a broader range of programs.

Assistance to Fire Departments

Three primary programs provide assistance to fire departments: the Forest Service’s Volunteer Fire Assistance (VFA), Interior’s Rural Fire Assistance (RFA), and FEMA’s Assistance to Firefighters. They each have different non-federal match requirements: 50 percent for the Forest Service, 10 percent for Interior, and 10-30 percent for FEMA (depending on population of the service area). The Forest Service and Interior programs assist very small fire departments serving populations of 10,000 or less, and the Interior program focuses on those in close proximity to the department’s own land. The FEMA program seeks to assist fire departments of all sizes regardless of location. The Forest Service and Interior programs are limited to grants of $20,000 or less (the Forest Service’s grants average under $2,000), while FEMA grants average $51,000.

In January 2003, the federal land management agencies, along with NASF and FEMA’s U.S. Fire Administration, adopted an MOU to provide a framework to coordinate the delivery of their fire department assistance programs.[17] Under this MOU, the federal agencies have agreed to cooperate in and coordinate their reviews of competitive applications for Fire Department Assistance awards; share pertinent program-related information about applicants’ pending grant applications and awards with other agencies and NASF; and share information about the assistance program parameters and schedules. NASF agreed to provide input on the specific fire departments’ applications being considered for awards by the federal agencies.

Table 2-3. OPPORTUNITIES MATRIX

Federal Programs[18]	Purposes of Assistance to State, Local, and Other Cooperators[19]
	Building Capacity			Implementation
	Suppression	Hazard Mitigation	Mitigation Mobilization[20]	Suppression	Mitigation	Rehab. and Restoration
Grants:
Volunteer Fire Assistance (USDA FS)	·
Rural Fire Assistance (DOI)	·	·
Assistance to Firefighters (FEMA)	·	·
State Fire Assistance (USDA FS)	·	·	·	·	·
Community and Private Lands Fire Assistance (USDA FS)[21]	·	·	·		·	·
Disaster Mitigation Grants (FEMA)			·		·
Reimbursement for Firefighting on Federal Property (FEMA)				·
Fire Management Assistance Grant (for firefighting on non-federal property)(FEMA)				·

Other Programs:
Firewise		·
Joint Fire Science	·	·	·
USDA FS/DOI NFP Fuels Reduction		·	·		·
USDA FS/DOI NFP Rehabilitation					·	·
USDA FS/DOI Suppression Funds				·
USDA FS/DOI Preparedness Funds	·

Community Assistance

The Forest Service allocates 65 percent of the National Fire Plan’s State Fire Assistance (SFA) funds[22] to states on a competitive basis for the planning and implementation of hazard mitigation projects: 60 percent to the western states, 25 percent to the southern states, and 15 percent to the northeastern states. These funds can be used for fuels reduction, prevention and mitigation education, and community hazard reduction. The remaining 35 percent is distributed by formula among the states to meet critical firefighting preparedness and safety needs. A 50 percent non-federal match is required.

The 2002 Farm Bill authorized a new program, Community and Private Lands Fire Assistance (CPLFA). The program was authorized at $35 million per year for use by the Forest Service, but as of December 2003, no funds have been appropriated for it. Its purposes are similar to those of the SFA program, but it puts additional emphasis on—and provides a mechanism for—assisting landscape-scale planning for hazard reduction. The details of administering CPLFA remain to be determined by Forest Service regulations, which are being drafted. The draft regulations would (1) establish a broad, performance-based coordination strategy and an all-parties annual implementation planning process at the state level, (2) fund the state process by formula, and (3) provide for bringing all the partners together to pool their efforts to reduce wildfire hazards. CPLFA funds may be used for the following activities: hazardous fuels mitigation, invasive species management, multi-resource wildfire planning, community protection planning, community and landowner education enterprises, biomass market development and expansion, improved wood utilization, and special restoration projects. All projects would have to be included in the state’s annual implementation plan. The draft regulations also require that plans be consistent with the 10-Year Strategy, State Fire Plan, and Disaster Mitigation Plans (as required by FEMA).

FEMA’s Mitigation Programs

FEMA has two disaster mitigation programs: Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program. Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funds are available to states after a declared disaster to use for activities to mitigate future risk from any type of disaster. States that receive post-disaster emergency funds from FEMA are eligible for HMGP funds in an amount of up to 7.5 percent of total emergency funds, if a state mitigation plan was approved prior to the disaster declaration. States can receive an amount up to 20 percent of emergency funds if they have “enhanced” mitigation plans that demonstrate superior implementation capabilities. Funds can be used for both state and local hazard mitigation activities, but localities must also have approved mitigation plans to be eligible. The plan requirements take effect for disasters declared after November 2004.

The Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program is intended to facilitate cooperation between state and local authorities, and includes comprehensive planning across all the hazards faced by the state or community. Funds were set aside in the 2002 and 2003 appropriations for each state for planning: in 2003 each state received $250,000 for this purpose, and these funds may be shared by a state with its local governments. The remaining funds will be awarded competitively to states for both planning and project implementation activities at the state and local (sub-applicant) levels. FY 2003 is the first year the competitive funds have been available. Applications for these grants were due by October 6, 2003. Appropriations for the PDM program in both FY 2003 and FY 2004 were $150 million, but the 2004 appropriation does not include a planning set-aside. The program requires 25 percent matching (including in-kind contributions), which can be reduced to 10 percent for communities with low financial capacity.

FEMA is the only federal agency currently requiring non-federal organizations to prepare hazard mitigation plans, and wherever wildfire hazards are significant, these plans must include a wildfire element. Local plans can be developed by any “local” government. In most states, they are being developed using multi-jurisdictional approaches, through regional planning organizations, counties, or councils of government. All communities that participate in the development of those plans, and whose CEOs are signatories to those plans, are credited with the adoption of the multi-jurisdictional plan once it is approved by FEMA.

When funding projects on private land, the land management agencies require project-by-project plans with applications for individual activities, but not the landscape-scale hazard mitigation plans called for by the Fire Policy and the 10-Year Strategy. Some state and community assistance funds offered by the federal land management agencies may be used to prepare landscape-scale hazard mitigation plans, but none are required to be used that way (as of September 2003). The Forest Service’s new CPLFA program has potential to be used for this purpose.

Other Programs

The previously mentioned Firewise hazard reduction program educates homeowners, communities, and local governments to take fire protection precautions on private and non-federal public properties. It began and continues as a project of NWCG’s National Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Program. Initially funded by the Forest Service, it is now funded jointly by the Forest Service, Interior, NASF, U.S. Fire Administration, the National Fire Protection Association, and FEMA’s Mitigation Division through a cooperative agreement. The National Fire Protection Association administers the program.

Over the last several years, Firewise has been expanded to a multi-element program that focuses on developers and communities as well as on individual homeowners. The state foresters (through NASF) have invested heavily in this mainstay program. The program is now being “handed off” to the states, moving from nationally sponsored workshops to greater state and local sponsorship. The national program will continue to provide educational materials and technical assistance to state and local activities designed to help communities and homeowners take collaborative responsibility for protecting their properties.

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) was established to fund applied research in the fuels area. Activities include (1) fuels inventory and mapping, (2) evaluation of fuels treatments, (3) scheduling of fuels treatments, and (4) monitoring and evaluation of fuels treatments. JFSP funds this research through federal interagency agreements, intra-agency agreements, and task orders. The recipients are primarily professors and applied researchers at universities, but their work often involves activities at specific field locations where local cooperators can benefit from it directly. The program has produced much of the knowledge needed to maintain up-to-date educational programs and to develop best practices for fuels management and defensible space activities.

Under the National Fire Plan, JFSP is sponsored by all five land management agencies as well as the U.S. Geological Survey. It is governed by an interagency board and is advised by a formal advisory committee established under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Firewise and JFSP are interagency in their makeup and administration. Thus, they may provide models for how other wildfire programs with interagency components could be more fully unified.

The NFP appropriation, which supplements other programs of the land management agencies, has several components. Two of these components are Fuels Reduction and Rehabilitation. The current focus of the Fuels Reduction program is on increasing the level of treatment in community interface areas, reducing fire risks in areas where the threat to the ecosystem is excessive, and increasing the use of private sector services in fuels treatments. The Forest Service and Department of the Interior administer fuels projects with the funds, and treated 2.7 million acres of federal land in 2003. Funding averages around $400 million per year, divided between the two agencies.[23]

The NFP Rehabilitation component was funded at almost $103 million in 2002, divided between the Forest Service and Department of the Interior. This money partially funds needed work on lands that are unlikely to recover naturally from fire damage. The goal of rehabilitation is to begin the recovery of burned areas to fire-adapted conditions, using native and other desirable plant species. Effective rehabilitation projects stabilize the soil and lessen the probability of future catastrophic fire in the treated area. Activities include reforestation, watershed restoration, road and trail rehabilitation, habitat restoration, replanting and reseeding. Projects are often multi-year.[24]

Biomass Utilization Funding

The Forest Service’s Economic Action Program has sponsored pilot projects that demonstrate how small-diameter timber and forest biomass can be used in economic ways to help offset the costs of forest thinning and fuels hazard reduction. It appears to be phasing out, but could be replaced, in part, by the biomass energy production program in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, and/or CPLFA. The Joint Fire Science Program has also sponsored some research in this field. For the most part, however, this effort rests on federal programs outside the land management agencies. For example, the Department of Energy has a Regional Biomass Energy Program that can be used. It encourages, but does not require, cost sharing.

Other federal agencies that have economic development programs suitable for helping to develop forest-biomass utilization include Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, Agriculture’s Rural Development Council Program that operates through state governors, and the Small Business Administration. These programs offer a variety of grants and loans that might be used creatively to promote wildfire-related biomass utilization programs. NFP funds may also be used for these purposes to the extent they are available.

Box 2-2. New Mexico Company Combines Federal Funds to Utilize Biomass

SBS Wood Shavings in Glencoe, New Mexico, is one of six locations nationwide that is participating in a biomass utilization pilot program co-funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory. Sites chosen for the program, known as the Small-Scale Modular Biomass Power System Demonstration, install and evaluate the new BioMax 15, a transportable, fully automated and environmentally friendly generator technology. BioMax 15 uses forest residue to produce both electricity and heat suitable for small enterprises, rural homes, and schools.

SBS manufactures wood shavings for animal bedding from small-diameter trees produced from forest thinning. These same trees, otherwise considered waste, are used to fire the BioMax 15, which produces electricity for the SBS facility. This new manufacturing operation is building a sustainable small-diameter business with local employees. It will produce an ecologically sound product from fuel reduction biomass materials, reduce biomass burning and air pollution in the area, support existing area businesses, and demonstrate a successful business model that could be established in other locations. The project is designed to show how private enterprise can help to support forest restoration with business revenues.

Other sources of federal funding supporting the commercial demonstration include Four Corners Sustainable Forests Partnership, Rural Community Assistance Economic Action Program, and Collaborative Forest Restoration Program.

Possible Future Programs

In 2003, several bills were introduced in Congress that relate directly to one or more aspects of this study. The bills are HR 1904, Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003; HR 1621, Federal Lands Hazardous Fuels Reduction Act of 2003; HR 1042, Forest Restoration and Fire Risk Reduction Act; S 1314, Collaborative Forest Health Act; S 1352, Community and Forest Protection Act; and S 1453, Forestry and Community Assistance Act of 2003. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 was enacted on December 3, 2003. One purpose of all of the bills is to expedite or improve capacity to conduct wildfire hazard mitigation, specifically hazardous fuels reduction, on federal and other public lands, with priority to wildland-community interface areas and watersheds. They all have provisions relating in some way to non-federal lands. All but one (HR 1621) also address larger issues of forest health and restoration. The bills, taken together, call for a wide variety of programs aimed at improving forest health through research, information gathering, and various forest management and ecological restoration projects.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act will create numerous new programs, several of which would also have been provided for by other bills. A brief description of these programs follows:

· Hazardous Fuel Reduction on Federal Land in wildland-urban interface areas and on federal lands in hazardous condition in proximity to municipal watersheds. In providing financial assistance for projects on non-federal land, the Secretary of Agriculture is mandated to consider recommendations made by at-risk communities that have developed community wildfire protection plans, and give priority in funding allocations to those same communities.

· Improved Biomass Use Research Program to provide the science, technology, and tools to forest managers and community developers for evaluating forest treatment and production alternatives (also in S 1352).

· Rural Revitalization Through Forestry Program to accelerate adoption of technologies using biomass and small-diameter materials and to create community-based enterprises to use such materials.

· Biomass Commercial Utilization Grant Program to offset costs of purchasing materials for biomass utilization facilities (also in S 1352).

· Watershed Forestry Assistance Program to address watershed issues on non-federal forested lands (also in S 1453).

· Accelerated Information Gathering Regarding Forest-Damaging Insects to combat infestations and related diseases.

· Healthy Forests Reserve Program for restoring and enhancing forest ecosystems to promote the recovery of threatened and endangered species, to improve biodiversity, and enhance carbon sequestration, through financial and technical assistance (also in S 1453).

· Forest Stands Inventory and Management program to improve detection of and response to environmental threats (also in S 1352).

Another bill, HR 1042, Forest Restoration and Fire Risk Reduction Act, includes some additional programs that could effectively complement mitigation efforts. It provides for a Cooperative Community Protection and Forest Restoration Program to provide cost-share grants to fund collaboratively implemented projects in community interface and watershed areas and create local employment. It also sets forth a collaborative process designed to work at a landscape scale. The process requires (1) an annual stakeholder workshop; (2) a priority-setting meeting between state and federal officials utilizing advice from a technical advisory board that would include state, local and private entities, along with federal agency personnel; and (3) priorities for projects that are landscape scale or benefit a watershed.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act should be coordinated with existing programs to avoid aggravating the administrative difficulties discussed below.

BARRIERS TO SUCCESS

Notwithstanding the efforts of parties at all levels, the effectiveness of ongoing wildfire hazard mitigation activities is constrained by several factors identified by the Academy’s workshops and additional research.

Workshop Concerns

At the workshops, numerous issues surfaced, including funding, stakeholder, and strategy issues.

Overall, funding and resources seem inadequate to the task. Participants in several of the workshops noted the difficulty that small communities have in raising funds to match federal grants, and some felt funding was unpredictable. Others noted the difficulties in navigating the current fu