E&E News: Bipartisan bill seeks billions for wildfire
By Marc Heller
A bipartisan pair of senators introduced legislation Wednesday to boost wildfire defense grants for communities, as Congress and the Trump administration hash out the federal government’s proper role in local fire protection.
Sens. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) proposed the “Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act,” mirroring bipartisan legislation in the House from California Reps. Jared Huffman (D) and Jay Obernolte (R).
The bill would devote $1 billion annually to help communities devise wildfire protection plans including home hardening, early detection, evacuation planning and other measures. Low-income communities would be given top priority, the sponsors said in a news release.
The community hardening grants would be run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and home hardening would become eligible for grants through the Forest Service’s community wildfire defense grants.
“To keep American cities and towns from burning to the ground and save lives, we must be proactive in aggressively hardening communities against the year-round threat of catastrophic wildfire,” Sheehy said in a statement.
Padilla, noting the one-year anniversary of devastating fires in California, said those fires demonstrated the danger of wildfire to urban as well as forested areas.
The Agriculture Department in September announced $200 million in community wildfire defense grants under the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, noting that the funding was mandated by Congress.
But the overall picture is of budget-cutting; the Trump administration asked Congress earlier this year to shrink the federal government’s role in community wildfire protection, although lawmakers haven’t followed the recommendation.
In calling for less funding for grants and partnerships with rural fire agencies in its 2026 budget request, the administration said the reduced level “reflects the fact that states and localities have a central role in funding wildfire preparedness and are best positioned to execute this core function without unnecessary Federal constraints.”
The administration has sought to transfer wildfire programs from the Forest Service to the Interior Department, but Congress has yet to agree. A new budget request, for fiscal 2027, is expected in the near future.
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