Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, has sponsored a new bill to manage the costs of Utah wildfires. HB 307 passed Utah’s state House and Senate and was sent to the Legislative Research and General Counsel for consideration on Feb. 27.
The bill’s intent is to streamline Utah’s wildfire management processes, consolidating various funding streams into one account that can be used to provide necessary funding for measures to prevent wildfires before they start, fight them while they are burning, and tackle infrastructure and environmental restoration needs after a fire is over.
Some of the measures this streamlining includes would be consolidating previous, more specialized state funds such as the Wildland Fire Suppression Fund and the Watershed Restoration Initiative with the new Utah Wildfire Fund.
The bill also clarifies responsibilities at the state and local levels to ensure that all parties would better know exactly what they need to accomplish in all stages of the wildfire mitigation process.
“Wildfire, in this state, requires three mechanisms to get ahead of it,” said Snider. “One is pre-fire suppression. Two is actual on-the-ground suppression, and three is post-fire mitigation. Right now, our state is set up to have dispersed programs that cover all three, but at times they don’t communicate.”
Snider used the Silver King wildfire in central Utah this past summer as an example, saying that although state efforts in fighting the fire were prompt, large-scale, and fully funded, the necessary clean-up measures after the fire ended were not coordinated as well or provided with as many resources. According to Snider, these shortcomings resulted in an inability to mitigate threats from erosion and monsoons in the burned areas.
Wildland firefighters in Utah have primarily supported Snider’s bill. Riley Pilgrim, assistant chief at the Unified Fire Authority, spoke in favor of the bill during a Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee meeting, saying he appreciates good management of state money allocated for wildfires.
“One thing to remember is that, it sounds like a lot,” Pilgrim said. “But one wildfire can really take a hit on the funds.”
The new Utah Wildfire Fund could also provide grants of up to $300,000 annually to local fire departments and volunteer groups to improve their abilities to prevent, fight, and clean up after wildfires. A minimum of $10 million would be allocated each year for wildfire prevention efforts in the state.
Jamie Barnes, Director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources Forestry, Fire and State Lands, said that this bill will have an especially positive impact on Southern Utah, which is at a higher risk for wildfires due to its drier, warmer climate.
“Across the state, and especially in Southern Utah, it’s going to have a positive effect on getting more project work done,” Barnes recently told St. George News. “It’s going to have a positive effect on prevention, on pushing messaging to fire sense. It’s going to have a positive effect on preparedness to those local communities. And then overall, just defining what wildfire prevention is to those local communities and making sure that we’re taking preventative actions to prevent wildfire on the landscape.”
Author: Emily Walters
Photo courtesy of Matt C.
Editor: Chevy Blackburn
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