DENVER - Federal agriculture and interior chiefs took a jab at Congress during an event Tuesday near Denver, asking for lawmakers to spend more money on wildfire-prevention measures.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell spoke at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City, flanked by U.S. Forest Service officials and a long line of yellow-clad firefighters with helmets on their heads and shovels in their hands.
"We can't do the remediation efforts like we need to do in Colorado when you have a big fire and then you get big floods after it," Jewell said, surrounded by a vast open range in the background. "When we haven't remediated those landscapes, we're in trouble, and when we have to rob our budgets to do that, it's a problem."
"We could do more, and we want to do more. That's why we need help and assistance from Congress," Vilsack said.
President Barack Obama's cabinet members pointed out that over the last several years, there has been a sharp increase in the Forest Service's budget for fire suppression, jumping to 50 percent from as little as 15 percent 25 years ago. They said the agency is forced to borrow from programs that would reduce fire risk and aid prevention in order to fund suppression efforts. Even though Colorado has had a wet spring, land management will be key to preventing devastating summer fires.
Republican members of the Colorado congressional delegation are skeptical of the cabinet members' message. U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton of Cortez worries the Forest Service is more focused on land acquisition than managing lands they already have.
"An unwieldy federal regulatory structure is encumbering proactive forest-management efforts on federal lands - including emergency hazardous fuels-reduction projects - the result of which has been the unnaturally, fast-moving and extremely hot wildfires seen over the past decade," Tipton said.
"The focus of the administration continues to be on reaction, rather than on proactive forest management needed to get ahead of the problem."
He believes the federal government should be looking to efforts spearheaded by Colorado, including forest restoration. The Legislature passed a law this year that allows for Colorado to pioneer new technology that predicts the intensity and direction of wildfires, perhaps giving as much as 12 hours' notice. And the state is moving forward with an aerial fire-fighting fleet.
U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner's office said minority Democrats are blocking the appropriations process for certain other funding priorities.
"Sen. Gardner believes the best way to deal with these critical funding issues is through the regular appropriations process, which Senate Democrats have vowed to hold up," said Alex Siciliano, a Gardner spokesman.
Even though wildfire management revolves around natural disasters that affect all walks of life, potentially with long-term devastating consequences, the issue is steeped in politics. Just this year at the state Legislature, Republicans ran partisan bills aimed at starting a conversation about transferring federal lands over to the state's authority, suggesting that Colorado would do a better job managing those lands. Jewell scoffed at the idea.
"Those are conversations that are a waste of time," Jewell said. "The future of what we know as the American West is at stake if we don't deal with it."