Utah’s HB48 is mandating modifications to homes in urban-wildland areas to mitigate the fire risks of property loss. Instead of taxpayers footing the bill for first responders to fight the threats, we’ll be seeing some of the expense shifted to home builders who indiscriminately place their projects on woodlands. Property protection is one of the main problems with wildfires and is a good headline-catching item in the proposed federal Fix Our Forests Act.
But there is no funding appropriated for the property part of that bill. Instead, the proposal is a cover to smother the public’s opposition to politicians’ personal agendas by changing existing legal protections.
Environmental laws can be meant to protect us from the laws of nature. The process of how we coordinate regulating human behavior to balance it within our natural world is part of the National Environmental Policy Act. However, Fix Our Forests would take the power of the people away by increasing an exemption to NEPA’s threshold for public comment. Taking complete control of fire shed management areas without consulting with us or tribes is wrong. Silencing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the BLM from providing new information about endangered species is wrong. Ignoring well-established provisions to give us public oversight brings this proposed law further into back-room-deal-making territory.
Cheri Condie
Cedar Hills