WASHINGTON — One month after a series of fires tore through Los Angeles destroying thousands of structures and killing 29 people, Democratic senators representing seven western states sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management on Monday demanding the agency allow various organizations to continue their wildfire remediation efforts.
The senators said President Donald Trump’s executive order cutting federal funds for hazardous fuel removal projects on federal lands at high risk for wildfire is illegal.
“Catastrophic wildfires across the United States are an ongoing national crisis and responding to them must be a national priority,” said the letter written by both U.S. senators representing the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.
“These stop work orders and funding freezes jeopardize communities that depend on a robust federal response to our wildfire crisis — and also jeopardize small businesses, often in frontier and rural communities, that are contracted to do the work on the ground to reduce hazardous fuels,” the letter continued.
The lawmakers demanded that that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting Agriculture Secretary Gary Washington take back the order they issued to end the agencies’ work to reduce wildfire risk in fire-prone areas.
“Hazardous fuels projects that are funded by base appropriations are continuing forward across the West,” the Bureau of Land Management told Spectrum News in a statement. “Fuels reduction work funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is currently undergoing review to ensure consistency with the Executive Order.”
The senators said hazardous fuel reduction projects are included in the congressionally approved Wildfire Crisis Strategy, with $3 billion appropriated through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act during the Biden administration.
