Gov. Bill Ritter and a slew of lawmakers announced a proposal Wednesday to significantly increase the amount of money the state spends on Colorado’s ailing forests.
At the same time, a local U.S. Forest Service official said the federal government is poised next year to spend tens of millions of dollars in Colorado on wildfire prevention and forest health problems, many of which stem from the mountain pine beetle epidemic that has gobbled up 1.5 million acres of the state’s lodgepole pines.
Combined, the state-federal beetle-busting campaign would represent the most concerted and well-funded effort yet to clear Colorado forests of the dead trees that officials fear could fuel a catastrophic wildfire.
“We’re taking a proactive approach,” said state Rep. Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon. “We’re dealing with something that will help the entire state.”
Under the proposal from Ritter and the lawmakers — an omnibus bill dubbed the Healthy Forests/Vibrant Communities Act that they plan to introduce when the legislative session begins in January — Colorado would spend $5.5 million in the next fiscal year on a variety of forest programs.
The programs would include tree-thinning operations near communities, reservoirs and power lines; efforts to help mountain towns develop wildfire plans; long-term restoration projects for dying forests in critical watersheds; and a loan fund for companies looking to use the surplus of dead trees to produce biofuel, home heating pellets or electricity.
While none of these ideas are especially new, the amount of money behind them is. Currently, the state spends about $1 million a year on forest health programs.
“This is something we’re doing in a much larger scale than we have ever done before,” Ritter said. “But we need a federal partner to do it even larger.”
As if on cue, U.S. Forest Service Deputy Regional Forester Tony Dixon said the government plans to spend $26 million in the region next year — much of that in Colorado — on forest thinning and rehabilitation programs. Dixon said it is important for the state and federal governments to work together to go after beetle-battered trees regardless of property lines.
“Trying to deal with the problem on just the federal portion is not effective,” he said. “The adjacent lands need to be treated as well.”
Some of the proposals in the bill are similar to those discussed by the state legislature’s interim wildfire committee, which two months ago proposed spending $50 million over five years on forest health programs in Colorado.
Sen. Mike Kopp, a Littleton Republican on the committee and also part of the omnibus bill’s backers, said he is still hoping to come up with a different funding source for those proposals by the interim committee not covered in the omnibus bill. One of those proposals is a grant program that would allow communities to target areas at the highest risk for damaging wildfires on private, state or federal land.
“That needs as much funding as we can put into it,” Kopp said.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
