Good morning Chairman Craig and Senator Wyden.  Thank you for the opportunity and the honor of testifying before you this morning.

My name is Colleen MacLeod. I am a County Commissioner from Union County in the Northeast corner of Oregon. I appear before you today on behalf of the National Association of Counties.

While every county is unique, I believe that our experiences using the tools of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) to improve forest health and protect our communities are typical of those of many of my fellow county officials across the country.

Union County is located in the Wallowa Whitman National Forest, which, along with the Umatilla and Malheur National Forest comprise what is known as the Iron Triangle.

Our county is mountainous, heavily forested and covers over a million three hundred thousand acres. Half of that land is in federal ownership. As you might well imagine, we, as a Board of Commissioners, devote a great deal of attention, time and funds to try to restore the natural resource balance in our region; a region that has suffered economic upheavals and declining forest health over the past several decades.

Mr. Chairman, as you may know, Union County is fortunate to be represented here in Washington by your colleagues on this Committee, Ranking Member Ron Wyden and Senator Gordon Smith, as well as by your counterpart in the other chamber, Chairman Greg Walden – all tireless advocates for our natural resource-based communities.  Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental that we enjoy a terrific relationship with our local federal land managers. 

Having said that, I must let you know that as I prepared for this hearing many of my fellow county officials from across the country have wanted me to emphasize the positive working relationships and collaboration that they also enjoy with their federal partners.  For one excellent example of these partnerships, please see the attachments describing the collaboration between the New Mexico Association of Counties, the BLM and the New Mexico State Forestry Division.  Mr. Chairman, as you know, NACo has not hesitated to be sharply critical of these agencies in the past, but in this case, Chief Bosworth and Director Clarke are getting the message out to their people on the front lines, and it is making a difference.

We in Union County are also fortunate in that we have retained some of the infrastructure essential for large forest health improvement projects.  We still have three working mills able to process the trees that clog our forests and threaten our surrounding communities. Those mills have managed to survive, in spite of the fact they can not depend on the federal forests that surround us for their timber supply. They have managed to exist through that 180 degree turn, where the public lands that were originally designed to insure resources to our nation, have now deferred that responsibility back to a dwindling supply on private land.

We also have the advantage of having been early practitioners of the kind of collaboration this committee has endorsed in HFRA and other legislation in recent years.  We have, by design and through necessity, built a consistently open and collaborative working relationship with our federal, state and local partners. It has been an effort to move forward and remedy what we perceive as an imbalance. Our efforts at creating a meaningful Union County Community Wildfire Plan have been more successful and useful due to our history of teamwork. We have historically been participants in efforts such as the Blue Mountain Demonstration Project and have had, since 2001 a local Forestry Restoration Board. That board tours project sites and collaborates on outcomes for planned USFS projects. Appointees to that board represent the county, federal and state forestry, tribes, fish and wildlife, marine fisheries, ranching, small woodlands, environmental and industry. It is not a flawless process, nor does it guarantee that its projects will not be appealed. It is, however, an open process that invites discussion before litigation and demands justification for litigation after the process.

The collaborative effort on our CWPP has been a model. We started early and we cast our participation nets very wide. The core planning team included members from federal and state agencies, local and tribal governments as well as representation from private landowners, industry, small rural fire protection districts and emergency service providers. The resulting document from this professional collaboration and the subsequent community meetings, is an in depth analysis of wildfire risk assessment. It was designed to reduce the potential for wildfires that threaten the people, the resources, structures and infrastructures that the people in my county value.

Our CWPP process was a methodical, data-based approach that combined the information and expertise of the planning agency members. Sixteen Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) areas were identified and their risk level was ranked based on such factors as population, level of development, topography, vegetation and weather patterns. The responsibility for implementing projects was determined by specific landowner or managing agency. Buy-in to hazard mitigation was obtained by comprehensive participation through the project identification process.

Although each WUI area has within in it, multiple uses and unique concerns, what became clear was that no one project could be implemented entirely within one agency or at one level of government. Due to our process of shared resources and combined knowledge we have had the ability to combine this disparate data and prepare and refine this comprehensive plan.

What do we do now that the planning is done? It is good to know what needs to be done. That is powerful knowledge. However, powerful knowledge requires equally powerful action. Planning without proper implementation is a wasted process.

On the private side, landowners in the affected areas are stepping up and cleaning house. Residents are creating defensible space by thinning overstocked stands, planting fire resistant vegetation, improving emergency access. They have been able to access over a half million in Fire Plan dollars and some of the commercial thinning has provided funding to reduce their costs and vulnerability.

On the public lands side, the risk reduction efforts have been much slower. Due to the usual circumstances, restoration and fire hazard reduction on public land is a process of running through sand. If the lawsuits don’t get you, the paperwork will.

There is little comfort and safety assurance to a landowner who has taken the necessary steps to fire proof his property, only to find the process of treating the federal land that surrounds him is either two years out in the planning process, or held up by litigation in the courts somewhere. It does no good to fire proof one room in your home if the rest of the house is a house fire waiting to happen.

However the tools you have given us are providing some light at the end of the tunnel.  For instance, my colleague on the NACo Public Lands Committee, Commissioner Alan Thompson of Ravalli County, Montana, tells me that U.S. District Court recently ruled on a high-priority project from their local CWPP that had been appealed.  After considering different alternatives in collaboration with local stakeholders – and adjusting proposals in light of concerns raised in the process, the Forest Service settled on an alternative that proposed harvesting a significant number of dead and dying trees both in the WUI around the little community of Sula and on the Bitterroot National Forest. In the course of the appeal which followed, Ravalli County intervened on the side of the Forest Service.  After hearing arguments from the County and the Fire Chief of Sula, Judge Malloy ruled in favor of the Forest Service and the County.  Commissioner Thompson says that without HFRA the time spent planning the projects and the appeals and litigation which seem inevitably to follow would be too long to remove the hazardous fuels which threaten our citizens and their property, not to mention the fish and wildlife that depend on the forest.  The provisions of HFRA that streamline the appeals and litigation process are proving to be very valuable and we believe that they should be preserved and perhaps extended to other agency planning activities.

Similarly, in Union County, HFRA and HFI have been very helpful to us, but we still run into regulatory issues like Eastside Forest Screens and PACFISH or other Endangered Species Act issues that prevent us from doing needed treatment.  While the ESA is not under the jurisdiction of this Committee, let me pause here to make an important point.  We believe that the ESA, as it is currently implemented, is the greatest single barrier to improving forest health on the scale and at the pace that our dire forest conditions demand.  Mr. Chairman, NACo believes that the Senate should move to update and improve the ESA before the 109^th Congress ends.  Failure to do so is a tragic waste of an historic opportunity.

As you might expect, Mr. Chairman, funding also continues to be a problem.  A number of counties report that they have completed their plans, but that priority projects are held up due to lack of funds to implement them. 

My colleagues in California are coming to the conclusion that this is due in part to a disconnect between Forest Service project planning and the CWPP process.  While the agencies have been wonderful partners, providing technical assistance to counties preparing CWPPs, too often these plans are considered “just” community plans, not integrated across the landscape, including federal, state and private ownerships.  Consequently, County Supervisors in California feel that they may not be realizing the full benefit of HFRA.  Part of the reason for this too may be that many CWPPs have included only projects that require grant funding, which limits the opportunity for a coordinated approach to fire risk reduction.  Since CWPPs were designed to coordinate efforts to reduce fire risk across the landscape, it may be useful to direct federal field personnel to integrate their plans with those of the communities, and to consider landscape scale projects which may generate revenue while accomplishing hazardous fuel reduction outcomes. This will improve opportunities for community members to recommend a community-wide fuel reduction strategy, provide meaningful participation in federal projects and expedite implementation of federal and private projects.

Another potential solution which we in Oregon have aggressively pursued uses the synergy that exists between Title II and Title III of your landmark Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act.  Many of our counties have been able to use Title III funds to support the CWPP process and then invest Title II resources to leverage project implementation. 

Our colleagues in California’s Regional Council of Rural Counties have made a number of other useful observations and recommendations which NACo submits as an attachment to this testimony.

In closing I ask that you continue to take what ever steps necessary to remedy this timeframe for restoring forest health. We need to get on with things. The forest needs our help. The citizens of this nation need our help.

If you have not viewed the literal cauterization that happens to an overstocked forest after a major fire, I can tell you first hand that it is no longer protection, nor habitat for man, beast or vegetation.

I am one of those residents who look directly out my front window every day at an overstocked, unhealthy forest; a forest that suffers from lack of treatment mainly because it had the misfortune to be designated Wilderness. This is not designated Wilderness because it has sat untouched by human activity. It has actually been accessed and used extensively for years.

No, I am not one of those people who seem to be drawing derision for building new McMansions out where others deem they shouldn’t. My home and the homes of my neighbors have been in place along the base of that mountain for over 100 years. The humans, the resources and the wildlife in that forest have managed to co exist in a multi-use forest framework for decades. The hand thinning we have managed to get through the restoration process will be no match for even a small fire. I have furnished you a photo I took from my driveway of a fire over the ridge a couple of years ago. Residents of my county and all across the landscape of public lands should not have to live with this kind of preventable threat.

Thank you for listening and for your ongoing efforts.

 ATTACHMENT A