- Beaver's devastating post-wildfire flooding has become a rallying point for state and federal leaders pushing changes to forest management and wildfire prevention.
- Local residents say restrictive federal permitting and environmental regulations have prevented active forest management, leaving forests dangerously overgrown.
- Federal lawmakers and officials referenced ongoing efforts to streamline regulations and advance the Fix Our Forests Act to reduce wildfire risks and improve forest health.
As state and federal leaders rolled into the Tushar Mountains near Beaver, Utah, on Friday, their tires pulled dried mud off the asphalt. Just several days earlier, flash floods had ripped through the area in the wake of the enormous Cottonwood Fire.
Mud lines still coat the bases of the canyon’s rocky face. Electrical lines are down. Their three hydropower plants have been destroyed.
Amid the destruction, Beaver has quickly become a warning sign for towns and communities across the West, fueling renewed debate over how to keep forests healthy.
On Sunday as flash floods began, Beaver Mayor Matt Robinson FaceTimed Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy, who lived in Beaver for a decade. Robinson told her, “Celeste, we’re going to need your help.”
So Maloy began making calls.
She gathered Michael Boren, the USDA undersecretary overseeing the Forest Service; Sam Crofts, a senior adviser in the Interior Department; Arkansas Rep. Bruce Westerman, chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources; Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah.; Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah; Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah; Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton; Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper; state Sen. Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City; state Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, and more.
Maloy also gathered a handful of local grazers to meet with the political delegation.
On the second floor of Beaver’s county office, the general consensus among locals was that managing their mountain should be easier, and the current permitting processes — as dictated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — are hurting their land and their businesses.
Politicians sat on the stand, and the grazers sat in the gallery.
Scott Dalton, a local grazer, referenced healthy tree densities, which are about 50–80 trees per acre.
“This mountain might have had 3,000 trees per acre on some of it,” he said. “So this fire was in the perfect condition to burn with how dry it is. ... To deal with this today, we need to be up there. The loggers need to be up there busting up the ground so that at least some of this water can get in.”
Dalton continued, “The locals need to be managing our forests.”
Tyler Roberts, a local working with cattle, paralleled Dalton. “We need to be in charge of our own forests, and we need to have a say in what goes on up there,” he said.
Bill Wright added, “I’m just concerned on what we are going to do going forward. I want to put the past behind us, team up and do the best we can to get back in production and distribution.”
Even those who don’t graze livestock in areas affected by the fires and floods have suffered the consequences of the disaster. When Maloy told the room that the city’s tap water was deemed safe for consumption again, one woman put her face in her hands, then looked back up in relief.
Why have forests become so difficult to manage?
After each invited resident was given time to speak, Maloy gave the other elected leaders a chance to answer their questions and concerns.
Boren, an Idaho native now serving in USDA leadership, described the layers and layers of environmental regulations his department is trying to streamline.
“The National Environmental Policy Act is not by itself designed to hurt you, and it wouldn’t hurt you if all we did was implement the National Environmental Policy Act without all of the other things we add to it,” he said.
On top of environmental laws passed by Congress, the U.S. Forest Service has a 19,000-page handbook. Then on top of that, Boren’s printed copy of the Code of Federal Regulations is 568 pages.
Boren said his department is trying to reduce those 19,000 pages into under 50 and the 568 pages to about 100.
“We’re going through every page and changing what hurts the American people,” he said.
The progression of Fix Our Forests
On the legislative side of things, Rep. Westerman has been leading efforts to pass his Fix Our Forests Act for several years.
The bill accelerates active forest management, reduces fuel loads, boosts reforestation and more.
“The Forest Service used to send money to the Treasury — they made money for the U.S. taxpayer," Westerman told the Deseret News. “Now the U.S. taxpayer pays $5 billion to $8 billion depending on how bad the fires are, and most of that money is to put fires out.”
Sen. Curtis, a sponsor of the bill in the Senate, thanked Westerman for his persistence in moving the bill forward.
“You don’t understand how big a deal it is and how good he is,” Curtis said. “He’s a forester by training. He heads the committee that has jurisdiction over all of this. He said earlier he spent over a decade trying to make this happen.”
Curtis continued, “The reality is that Washington, D.C., does move slowly, but it’s actually not all bad. ... The Founders designed it that way.”
Beaver’s community begins to heal
Before their discussion on forest management, locals and visiting politicos spent the morning enjoying Beaver’s Pioneer Day festivities.
A parade marched its way down Main Street, then locals gathered in an adjacent park. They prayed together, thanking God for their home and asking him to protect it from further harm.
Under a large pavilion, several women from one congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints directed people into a line and handed out food. Beverly Abbott had taken charge of making a meal for the town this year.
The line was long for pulled pork sandwiches and potato salad.
Beaver City and County have received emergency assistance from private donors, the state and from federal agencies like the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).