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As I said, it is only a matter of time before a cataclysmic fire strikes Lake Tahoe, with potential loss of life, habitat, and property. Already, run-off and problems associated with erosion have

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   This amendment helps provide funding to remove dead and dying trees from Lake Tahoe National Forest where almost one-third of that forest today is dead or dying.

   Last year, Senators REID, BOXER, BRYAN, and Congressman Doolittle, Congressman Gibbons, and I introduced the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act to authorize the necessary funding to deal with this problem. It is very timely that this bill will be marked up by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Thursday and has already been marked up at the subcommittee level in the House.

   The Domenici-Feinstein amendment could be used in that forest. It could almost be used in the Quincy area. In 1998, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Quincy Library Group Project.

   This legislation authorized a 5-year demonstration project based on the forest management plan assembled by the Quincy Library Group, a coalition of local environmentalists, public officials, timber industry representatives, and just plain concerned citizens who came together in the Quincy Library so they could not yell at each other, to resolve longstanding conflicts over timber management of national forests in the area.

   The project, which is only a pilot, is to see if there is not a better way to manage our forests by combining strategic fuel breaks with selected mechanical thinning and controlled burn. I have had some disagreements with the Forest Service in the past over Quincy, but I believe the project is back on track and I am determined to see, if I can, that funding is appropriated to complete the project to the letter of the law.

   I want to quickly speak about one other thing. One of the possibly most cataclysmic fires could occur in the newly designated Sequoia National Monument. This is about 366,000 acres. Once the monument was declared, two timber mills closed down. I have been working with the community in that area to be able to put forward a removal of hazardous fuels. These trees are the largest trees in the world. Around these large trees have built up this dense underbrush, this fuel load that I have spoken about. If this is not removed, this underbrush creates the kind of fuel ladder that can effectively destroy the Sequoias.

   The State of California additionally has prepared an adaptive management plan and had been working in the Sequoia area. What they showed was, as you clear certain limited areas around the giant Sequoias, that the giant Sequoias actually grew bigger and grew fatter and were much healthier for it. It is my hope that over the next few years we can reduce the fuel loading on 24 million acres that the Forest Service has identified as being at this level 3. Level 3 is the most significant fire threat. Then focus on the other 18 million acres at jeopardy.

   Let me just recount. One-third of all of the national forests at catastrophic fire level in the United States are in the State of California. It is the entire Sierra Nevada range, it is the Sequoia, it is part of the Plumas and Lassen National Forests, and of course the Tahoe National Forest. There is, indeed, a lot to be done if we are not only to protect our endangered species but also protect the property and the people who live in these areas as well.

   I think Senator DOMENICI's legislation is timely. It is well thought out. I think making this an emergency and moving in the class 3 areas and being able to remove this underbrush is a major step forward in prudent forestry management all throughout the West.

   I thank the Senator. It was a delight to work with him. I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CRAPO). The Senator from Idaho.

   Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I will take a few moments to clarify where we are because I think some of our colleagues are slightly confused as to the amendment I offered dealing with the roadless area review and the FACA committee process, and the amendment our colleague from New Mexico has offered, and the Senator from California has just spoken to, dealing with fuel reduction in our forests.

   There is no doubt, what I was attempting to do dealt specifically with the roadless area rule specific to whether there had been a violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. I was asking the Secretary to formulate an advisory committee to review that.

   I had visited with Senator DOMENICI and several things came together that I think are important for us to deal with in the immediate. First of all, there have already been two lawsuits filed against this administration on the Federal Advisory Committee Act process as it relates to the roadless area review process. We believe a judge will make a decision on those two lawsuits, as to their validity and their ripeness, by mid-August. What is important here is for the courts to clarify whether FACA, as a law, is either real or dead letter.

   Let me explain that. This administration has been accused and found in violation of FACA on several occasions. But the problem is, once the court has made that determination, the rule was already on the ground. So it is like they violated the law, but so what. The process is over with.

   What the court will decide this time is, Is FACA a law that should intervene prior to a final rule and cause an administrative agency to change its course of direction or action prior to a final rule? That is what will happen in August.

   I have decided it is important we do not get in front of that ruling by the courts. I think it is very important for this Congress to know whether the law it crafted, known as the Federal Advisory Committee Act, is a dead letter or if it is operative. Right now, based on findings, it is a Catch-22: Yes, they violated the law but so what; the rule is already in place.

   That is not the intent of Congress. The intent of Congress is to cause a cause of action change in a rulemaking process if the Federal Advisory Committee Act has been violated.

   Then enters the Los Alamos fire and Senator BINGAMAN and Senator DOMENICI trying to resolve that particular crisis of bad policy and bad decisionmaking coming together to not only create a catastrophic environmental situation but also ultimately to cost the taxpayers of this country $1 billion, or somewhere near that. That is the tip of an iceberg of a current forest health problem to which the Senator from California has spoken so clearly.

   What the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from California saw, witnessed, experienced, with hundreds of lives and hundreds of families and lives displaced----

   Mr. DOMENICI. Thousands.

   Mr. CRAIG. Is the nature of a catastrophic event that is in the nature of forest health.

   We now have 22 million acres of our forested lands in crisis because of the fuel loading that has been talked about because of a management style of the last 50 years. Yet there seems to be no desire to deal with this on a constructive, environmentally positive basis that begins to remove that fuel.

   The amendment of the Senator from New Mexico, of which I am now a cosponsor, which is a substitute offered to my amendment, goes at this problem in a very real and direct way. That is why I think it is so important that we move forward. I have been advised--and I agree--we should allow the courts to act on the Federal Advisory Committee Act. We will find out whether we have a real law or whether we have a false law; whether it works or it does not work. We will know that by mid-August. If they rule otherwise, we have either to come in and revise it or I think the Congress should act and intervene against the President in his rulemaking process, outside the public policymaking process of the Congress itself. But in the meantime, there is no question in my mind, with my activities, looking at the U.S. forest-managed lands--last week I was in Great Falls, MN. Last year, on July 4, they had a 472,000-acre blowdown. There are fuel loading problems in that State and every other State in the Nation that has public forested lands, that are phenomenal in their nature.

   Let me explain. The Senator from New Mexico, Mr. DOMENICI, talked about literally having barrels of gasoline on the ground, in equivalent Btus of fire capability. It is believed that in

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   Yet our Forest Service and this administration choose not to do anything about it. If we are good stewards of the land, we will not allow the stand-altering, environmentally crazy policy of catastrophic fire of the kind in the forests of New Mexico and the kind that are burning across the West today to be the policy of the management of our forests.

   I would be the first to tell you we ought to reenter fire as a management tool of the ecosystems of our forests, but fire ought not enter an acre of land that has 10,000 gallons of gasoline stored in the form of slash and dead and dying timber in equivalent Btu's. That we cannot tolerate, or it will truly destroy the land as we know it, the environment as we know it, the riparian areas as we know them, and certainly habitat for any wildlife, let alone any kind of constructive management that would provide the needed fiber for our public in home building, paper, and so many materials we have wisely used our forests for over the years.

   I support Senator DOMENICI, Senator BINGAMAN, and Senator FEINSTEIN as a cosponsor of this substitute. It is critically important.

   In closing, in the substitute there is an important analysis, and it is an analysis that deals with the roadless problem. If the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico becomes law, it will cause the Forest Service to develop a cohesive strategy for protecting people and sustaining resources in fire-adaptive ecosystems; in other words, a fire strategy to deal with these kinds of fuel loadings. It would then have to place that strategy against the other rulemaking processes that are underway.

   One of those rulemaking processes is the roadless area review or the roadless area protection proposal, to see whether that proposal denies the Forest Service the ability to manage these lands to protect them from catastrophic fire. I find that an important test and a necessary analysis of where we are going and how we want to manage these lands.

   It also causes them to look at the areas of concern of the Senator from California--the Sierra Nevada framework and the Sierra Nevada draft plan environmental impact statements. All of those deserve to be examined in light of the fire situation we have on these public lands at this moment. We cannot idly sit by and watch hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of acres a year burn in wildfires, destroying wildlife habitat, destroying fiber that could be constructively used and, most important, dramatically altering the ecosystems of those areas that embody these catastrophic fires.

   I support the substitute. It is important we stay in focus on the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The courts will rule in August, and then Congress will be able to act according to that ruling if, in fact, the courts have decided the Federal Advisory Committee Act is a dead letter in public law.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.

   Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, first, I commend my colleague, Senator DOMENICI, for this amendment and indicate I am very glad to be a cosponsor of it. It is an important amendment which is much needed in my State and throughout much of the country.

   The problem has been well described by Senator DOMENICI, Senator FEINSTEIN, Senator CRAIG, and others. I do not need to elaborate on that to a great extent, except to say there are many communities in our State of New Mexico which genuinely feel threatened because of the fact that they are adjacent to our national forests and the forests have been allowed to build up underbrush in a way which makes them a fire hazard--communities such as Santa Fe and Los Alamos, which have been mentioned, Ruidoso, Cloudcroft, and Weed. I know my colleague was visiting with citizens in the small community of Weed, NM, about this very issue. There is no question the time has come when it needs to be addressed, and this amendment will allow us to do that on an emergency basis. It is, as I said before, much needed.

   Let me give a little background. Even before this year's catastrophic fires, which have really been a wake-up call to all of us about the significance of this problem, particularly the fire at Los Alamos, the Cerro Grande fire, but the Scott Able fire in the southern part of New Mexico, the Cree fire in the southern part of New Mexico, and the Viveash fire in northern New Mexico--we have had a series of fires. Over, I believe, 65,000 acres in my State have burned so far this year. That does not begin to approach the number of acres perhaps in California, as cited by the Senator from California, but it is a great many acres for our State considering the amount of forests we have. Well over 400 homes have been destroyed in our State. So the problem is very real.

   Last year, in the first session of this Congress, I was very pleased that, on a bipartisan basis, Senator DOMENICI and I cosponsored a bill, S. 1288, entitled the Community Forest Restoration Act which attempted a demonstration project in New Mexico to begin dealing with this problem of the urban wild land interface, to begin thinning of forest areas near these communities.

   In putting this legislation together, we were able to get the cooperation not only of the communities themselves but of many of the groups which take a great interest in the health of our national forests, including several of the major environmental groups. I thought this was major progress. The bill passed the Senate unanimously. It went to the House of Representatives. It has been marked up in subcommittee. It will go to the full committee next week.

   This legislation was very small. It was a demonstration project. It was aimed only at New Mexico communities, but it set a good precedent for the type of thing we are talking about, where the Forest Service and the other Federal land management agencies could make grants available to community groups to deal with this problem in a very real and responsible way.

   I particularly appreciate the statement Senator DOMENICI made in his presentation that this amendment, to provide substantial additional funding to the land management agencies to deal with the problem, does not involve any change in environmental laws.

   Also, this amendment does not involve any change in NEPA,

   the National Environmental Policy Act. This does not waive that law. This amendment is consistent with those laws. We are providing resources and directing that a substantial effort take place to deal with this problem around the communities that are adjacent to our national forests. It is very important that this happen.

   I want to have printed in the RECORD three documents that are important as background. One is a letter that the New Mexico delegation sent to Mike Dombeck, the Chief of the Forest Service, on May 19 of this year, urging that the Forest Service come forward with a proposal for how they will begin to address this problem. The second document is a response by Chief Dombeck to me on the subject. And the third is a followup response to Senator DOMENICI from Chief Dombeck, also alluding to what the Forest Service thought they could do to address this very real problem.

   I ask unanimous consent that these three letters be printed in the RECORD at the conclusion of my remarks.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   (See Exhibit 1.)

   Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me mention one other aspect of this which I think is significant, and that is the Forest Service has a program called a Cooperative Fire Protection Program which they try to use to educate people who own homes in or near the forests and also to work with people who have private homes in our forests, that are private property, so the benefits of some of this clearing, some of this thinning we are talking about can also be realized by the people who have those homes, and those homes can be better protected as a result.

   One thing that became obvious to me as a result of the Los Alamos fire was that there had been a thinning that had taken place around the laboratory itself, around many of the structures of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and because of that, because of that thinning activity, there was a dramatic

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   I think it is very important that we try to take what we have learned about how to reduce the risks of fire and apply that in a responsible way, and do so as soon as possible.

   For that reason, I am very pleased to see this amendment being considered. Again, I compliment my colleague for proposing the amendment.

   Mr. President, I yield the floor.

   Exhibit 1

   U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

   FOREST SERVICE,

   Washington, DC, June 16, 2000.
Hon. PETE DOMENICI.
Hart Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC.

   DEAR SENATOR DOMENICI: With the Senate in final stages of completing the fiscal year 2000 emergency supplemental appropriation, I want to provide you with the information you requested on Forest Service capability to significantly reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in wildland-urban interface areas .

   I know you agree that the tragic fires in New Mexico and those currently burning in Colorado, are focusing our attention on the critical need to reduce hazardous fuels throughout the national forests and particularly areas adjacent to urban interface areas . The emergency supplemental appropriation gives us an opportunity to immediately take action to avoid similar fire disasters in the future.

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