This bill aims to reduce catastrophic wildfire risk by streamlining forest management activities, expanding collaboration with local entities, and improving vegetation management around electrical utility lines.
Doug LaMalfa
Representative
CA-1
This bill aims to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires by streamlining forest management activities, such as hazardous fuel reduction and vegetation management near power lines. It expands the use of timber sales and grazing for risk reduction, increases the size of wildfire mitigation projects, and reforms administrative requirements related to land management and species protection. The bill also includes provisions to facilitate collaborative forest restoration projects between states, counties, Indian tribes, and the federal government. These changes are intended to expedite wildfire mitigation efforts and protect communities and ecosystems.
TORCH Act Proposes Faster Wildfire Prevention by Expanding Logging, Grazing, and Easing Environmental Rules
Congress is looking at a new bill, the "Targeted Operations to Remove Catastrophic Hazards Act" or TORCH Act, designed to speed up forest management activities aimed at preventing massive wildfires. The core idea is to make it quicker and easier for the Forest Service and Department of the Interior to clear out hazardous fuels – things like dead trees and overgrown vegetation – by tweaking environmental review processes, expanding project sizes, and giving more leeway for activities like logging, grazing, and clearing near power lines.
Cutting Through the Red Tape?
One major theme here is streamlining approvals. The bill proposes several ways to bypass some standard environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which usually requires agencies to study the potential environmental impact of their actions. For instance, it mandates a new "categorical exclusion" – basically, a shortcut past detailed review – for removing "high-priority hazard trees" within 300 feet of roads, trails, and recreation sites on projects up to 3,000 acres (Sec 101). Similar exclusions are proposed for routine vegetation management along power line routes (Sec 302) and for larger collaborative restoration projects, bumping the size limit from 3,000 to 10,000 acres (Sec 402). The bill also speeds things up for utilities, setting tight deadlines (60-67 days) for approving their plans to manage vegetation near power lines (Sec 301). Think faster removal of that dead tree leaning towards your favorite hiking path, but potentially with less upfront environmental assessment.
Shifting Environmental Guardrails
The push for speed comes with significant changes to environmental protections. Section 302 explicitly exempts routine vegetation management, inspection, and maintenance activities along power line rights-of-way from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Historic Preservation Act. This means clearing vegetation in these areas wouldn't trigger the usual requirements to check for impacts on threatened or endangered species or historical sites. Furthermore, Section 401 states that agencies generally don't have to restart ESA consultations on existing forest management plans just because a new species is listed or new information about impacts comes to light. For folks concerned about wildlife, this raises questions about whether protections for vulnerable species might be weakened in the name of efficiency. Imagine a rare plant is discovered near a power line corridor – under this bill, routine clearing might proceed without the specific ESA checks currently required.
Expanding the Toolkit: More Logging, Grazing, and Clearing
The TORCH Act also broadens the scope of allowable activities. It increases the value limit for timber sales that can happen without a formal appraisal from $10,000 to $50,000 and allows selling timber without appraisal specifically for risk reduction (Sec 102). It pushes for increased livestock grazing on public lands as a tool to reduce flammable grasses, requiring a plan to fast-track permits, especially during droughts or after fires (Sec 103). The bill expands the allowable size for wildfire resilience projects and fuel breaks from 3,000 to 10,000 acres (Sec 104, 105). For electrical utilities, the zone for cutting hazard trees near power lines on federal land expands from 10 feet to 50 feet (Sec 301), and they get authority to cut and remove vegetation near lines without a separate timber sale contract, though proceeds from any sale (minus costs) go back to the Forest Service (Sec 303). This could mean more visible clearing along power lines and potentially more grazing animals in areas recovering from fire, alongside larger-scale forest thinning projects.