Editorial: A burning debate

Wednesday, June 27, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

T he House is expected to vote today on a 2008 spending bill that includes $2.8 billion for preventing and fighting wildfires - a $200 million increase over last year.

President Bush has promised to veto the overall $27.5 billion Interior and Environment Appropriations measure because it increases federal spending by $2 billion more than he has proposed. And while the House seeks to increase spending for fighting and preventing wildfires , such as by removing excess brush and other fuel, Bush wants to cut wildfire funding by $96 million.

Meanwhile, as those on Capitol Hill debate the academics of fighting wildfires, about 1,000 people have been evacuated from communities near Lake Tahoe's southern shore, where wildfire has consumed 2,730 acres and 275 buildings and homes. An additional 500 homes had been threatened, federal fire officials said, but that threat lessened Tuesday morning as firefighters contained about 40 percent of the blaze.

The wildfire season is just beginning, yet fires already have scorched more than 1.4 million acres this year - including 400,000 acres in Georgia's Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, where firefighting costs have risen to $22.7 million, Gannett News Service reported on Tuesday.

A report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says the five federal agencies charged with fighting wildfires - the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service - could do a better job of coordinating their efforts and containing costs.

But the fact remains that millions more people now live in rural areas that are susceptible to wildfires. The New York Times on Tuesday reported that 8.6 million homes have been built within 30 miles of federal forests in the West since 1982. And that increases the potential for massive wildfire losses of property and, more importantly, human life.

Bush's call for cutting funding for prevention and firefighting efforts is shortsighted, and it won't measure up when a town is wiped from the map or requires millions - if not several hundreds of millions - in federal recovery aid in the wake of a fire that might have been avoided with adequate prevention .

Certainly, the federal agencies need to effectively coordinate their efforts and maintain reasonable budgets. But this is not the time to cut federal funding for preventing and fighting these devastating fires.