With wildfires ravaging Southern California, the Fix Our Forests Act, a bipartisan bill supported by the Central Valley’s congressional delegation, passed the House of Representatives on Thursday.

Sixty-four Democrats joined 215 Republicans to pass the bill, 279-141. View the roll call vote at this link.

The legislation aims to restore forest health, increase resiliency to catastrophic wildfires, and protect communities by expanding environmental analyses, reducing frivolous lawsuits, and increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration projects.

“Over 117 million acres of our nation’s forests are dangerously overgrown and fire-prone, putting lives and communities at risk,” said Rep. David Valadao (R-Kings County) in a statement. “The Fix Our Forests Act takes critical steps to address the growing wildfire crisis by streamlining forest management, prioritizing prevention, and adopting new technologies to fight forest health threats.”

Related Story: Costa, Valadao React to Possible Conditions on Wildfire Relief

Act Includes Costa’s Headwaters Protection Legislation

Notably, the act includes Rep. Jim Costa’s Headwaters Protection Act, which reforms the Water Source Protection Program by boosting authorized funding, expanding eligibility for public entities like local water districts, and increasing the federal cost share to increase interest and participation in the program.

“The Headwaters Protection Act supports public-private partnership-driven restoration projects like the Olam Project in the San Joaquin Valley,” said the Fresno Democrat in a news release. “The Olam Project is a series of restoration projects within the Pine Flat watershed between the USDA Forest Service, the National Forest Foundation, and Unilever. These investments would reduce wildfire risk, improve watershed health, and benefit downstream communities.”

A Look at the Act

According to Valadao, the Fix Our Forests Act will:

• Simplify and expedite environmental reviews to reduce costs and planning times for critical forest management projects while maintaining rigorous environmental standards.
• Makes communities more resilient to wildfire by coordinating existing grant programs and furthering new research.
• Stop frivolous litigation and endless agency consultations that delay needed forest management activities.
• Give agencies new emergency tools to restore watersheds, protect communities in the wildland-urban interface, and prevent forest conversion.
• Utilize state-of-the-art science to prioritize the treatment of forests at the highest risk of wildfires.
• Incentivize forest management projects of up to 10,000 acres to increase the pace and scale of addressing wildfire, drought, insects, and disease.
• Adopt new and innovative technologies to address forest health threats and suppress wildfires quickly and more efficiently.