Blast from the Past: Hazardous Fuels Program Accountability

Thanks to Matthew for posting the NBC report.. I’ve posted some things here and here about this issue. The article states correctly that this push has been going on for some years.. I went back to some docs from the past and was surprised how much the discussion resembles that of the present day. Maybe there should have been some bucks for revising accountability measures in the IRA? I think using the scenario planning prioritization was an effort to address some of the concerns. Perhaps there are others? Budget structure? Of course the FS may be too busy responding to the many zillion other things it’s supposed to do, with employees retiring and difficulties hiring..

Guess which year this was written by whom? First correct answer gets.. to write a TSW post on their topic of choice.

Accountability Must Now Become A Priority

With the Congress and the administration now prepared to double or triple the Forest Service’s and Interior’s funding for reducing hazardous fuels and with up to five times the current fiscal year’s appropriation already available from within the Forest Service’s existing budget for these activities and related research, we believe that the Forest Service and Interior must act quickly to develop a framework to spend effectively and to account accurately for what they accomplish with the funds.
For example, according to the Forest Service, priority for treatments to reduce hazardous fuels should be given to areas where the risk of catastrophic wildfires is the greatest to communities, watersheds, ecosystems, or species. However, currently neither the Forest Service nor Interior knows how many communities, watersheds, ecosystems, and species are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire, where they are located, or what it will cost to lower this risk. Therefore, they cannot prioritize them for treatment or inform the Congress about how many will remain at high risk after the appropriated funds are expended. According to the report on managing the impact of wildfires released by the administration last Friday, regional and local interagency teams will be
assigned the responsibility for identifying communities that are most at risk.

Moreover, rather than allocating funds to the highest-risk areas, the Forest Service allocates funds for hazardous fuels reduction to its field offices on the basis of the number of acres treated. Thus, the agency’s field offices have an incentive to focus on the easiest and least costly areas, rather than on those that present the highest risks but are often costlier to treat, including especially the wildland-urban interfaces. Similarly, both the Forest Service and Interior use the number of acres treated to measure and report to the Congress their progress in reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires. For instance, they report that they have increased the number of acres treated to reduce hazardous fuels from fewer than 500,000 acres in fiscal year xxx to more than 2.4 million acres in fiscal year xxxx. However, they cannot identify how many of these acres are within areas at high risk of long-term damage from wildfire.

The Forest Service and Interior note that reducing the threat to communities, watersheds, ecosystems, and species can often take years and that annual measures of progress must, therefore, focus on actions taken. We agree, but believe that they must be able to show the Congress and the American public that these actions, such as the number of acres treated, occur within the highest-priority areas. Furthermore, over time, they should be able to show reductions in areas at high risk of long-term damage from wildfire.

Finally, although we have not examined this issue as thoroughly at Interior, our work to date at the Forest Service has shown that, over time, the link between how the Congress appropriates funds and how the agency spends them has weakened as the Forest Service’s field offices have been required to address issues and problems—such as hazardous fuels reduction—that are not aligned with its budget and organizational structures. Forest Service field offices must now combine projects and activities from multiple programs and funding from multiple sources to accomplish goals and objectives related to reducing hazardous fuels. We have observed that the agency could better ensure that the up to $325 million a year that may already be available from within its existing budget to fund hazardous fuels reduction activities and research will be used for these purposes by replacing its organizational and budget structures with ones that are better linked to the way that work is routinely accomplished on the national forests. We have also observed that the Forest Service’s research division and state and private programs should be better linked to the national forests to more effectively address hazardous fuels reduction as well as other stewardship issues that do not recognize the forests’ administrative boundaries. However, according to the Forest Service, it has no plan to replace its program structure with one that is better linked to the way that work is routinely accomplished on the national forests.

6 thoughts on “Blast from the Past: Hazardous Fuels Program Accountability”

  1. CALFIRE has been called out for overinflated acreage. Much of it is related to CEQA project acreage versus actual treated acres. One is used for the assessment, whereas treated acres are where it counts.

    Also, do you count the same acre two or more times if it was thinned, masticated, burned, and sprayed all as part of the same project? The issue of acres versus “quality” acres is also one that needs to be discussed. A WUI acre might be more valuable than an acre in the middle of nowhere.

    Reply
    • A. – I think as far back as HFRA, WUI acres were “prioritized” for that reason. However I don’t know how this worked in practice. It would be interesting to have a post on how that worked out and why.

      Reply
  2. It is a lot easier to keep track of what you have done than what that has accomplished (unfortunately the FS seems to like to refer to the former as “accomplishments.”); the latter requires assessment and monitoring. What role should the communities at risk play in determining and reporting the degree of risk reduction they have received, and their current risk level? This could help someone keep track of the number of WUIs improved or worsened as a measure of success.

    Reply
  3. If memory serves me correctly, we could count the same acre four or five times! Ridiculous! As we were fighting the battle of 4-FRI vs White Mountain Stew (WMS) the shortcomings of 4-FRI accomplishments were “corrected” by using the WMS accomplishments, to “buff up” that disaster. I was caught off guard earlier in my Forest Sup role (actually, my first RLT) that the Region could not fund our WNS timber program any longer; we had to do it out of our own Regional allocation. Thanks for the soft landing….

    Anyway, acres should be counted one time; making things look better than they really are only works to undermine the silliness in accomplishments and annual programs of work.

    Reply
    • My first job with the agency involved reporting acres into NFPORS, which was the tool at the time. The system was made to report each acre at least three, maybe four times (tree cutting (year 1), stacking and arranging the fuels (year 2), burning the stacked piles (year 3), and …maybe planting (year 4).

      Jon Haber might be right, some type of outcome based approach like moving a sub-watershed into a better condition class, or WUI improvement would be better. However, someone other than the agency needs to make determinations on fire-risk improvement and be responsible for upward reporting. I would think the insurance and re-insurance business would have a vested interest in getting a more accurate picture.

      Reply

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