Colorado's Joe Neguse leads policy package to address wildfires, droughts nationwide

Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse is leading a package of 49 bills designed to help address wildfires and droughts throughout the country.

Neguse, D-Lafayette, on Thursday unveiled the Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act, which combines dozens of previously introduced legislation, including bills to increase firefighter pay to at least $20 per hour, fund $500 million in preservation of reservoirs and provide various assistance to victims of wildfires and droughts.

“We need to apply a whole-of-government approach to recovery,” Neguse said. “Across America, the impacts of climate change continue to worsen. In this new normal, historic drought and record-setting wildfires have become all too common. What once were fire season, are now fire years.”

The package also includes several of Neguse’s own bills, such as the Wildfire Recovery Act to increase resources for communities rebuilding after wildfires; the Wildfire Smoke Relief Act to provide federal emergency assistance to at-risk people suffering from unhealthy air quality from wildfire smoke; and, the Land Restoration and Resiliency Act to fund projects to protect against climate change.

The policy package comes as Colorado has suffered increasingly devastating wildfires in recent years. In December, the Marshall fire – the most destructive wildfire in state history – tore through more than 1,000 homes in Boulder County. The three largest wildfires in Colorado history all occurred in 2020.

During Thursday’s press conference promoting the package, Neguse was backed by nearly a dozen Democratic members of Congress, mostly from other Western states that are also struggling with wildfires.

“I share the sorrow and the pain of having watched our communities’ homes and livelihoods go up in flames, and the deaths that occur from that,” U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-New Mexico, said. “The bill is like a gentle monsoon rain falling on our parched landscape. It brings both hope and solutions.”

New Mexico is currently experiencing its largest wildfire in state history — the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire — which has burned over 340,000 acres so far. Multiple California representatives also spoke in favor of the bill, saying seven of the state’s worst fires in history occurred in the last four years and 53,000 acres have already burned this year.

Supporters of the package emphasized that, though the West is disproportionately affected by wildfires and droughts, all states suffer, especially due to wildfire smoke harming air quality nationwide.

“We are one nation, indivisible, and if one part of us is burning, we are all burning,” U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said. “Climate challenge is a crisis, and unfortunately, there are too many in the Congress of the United States on the other side of the aisle who dismiss it as the critical problem that it is.”

Neguse said most of the 49 bills included in the package are bipartisan, giving him hope that Republicans will support the package. However, his optimism is cautious, calling the U.S. Senate “a place where good ideas go to die.” 

The U.S. House is expected to vote on the package this week.