HR6387-119

What This Bill Does

The FIRE Act changes how the Clean Air Act treats air-quality monitoring data affected by prescribed fire or similar wildfire-risk mitigation actions. It adds a new defined term, "action to mitigate wildfire risk," covering a prescribed fire or similar measure undertaken under state-approved practices to reduce wildfire risk and severity. It also revises the exceptional-event definition so natural events, human activity intended to mirror natural events, and unlikely-to-recur human activity remain covered, while ordinary stagnation, inversions, and pollution from source noncompliance remain excluded.

EPA must revise the exceptional-event regulations within 18 months after enactment to cover actions to mitigate wildfire risk. The bill also lets state, local, and tribal air regulators request that EPA exclude air-quality data influenced by these wildfire-risk mitigation actions when EPA makes designations, classifications, findings of attainment or nonattainment, determinations on exceedances, or similar regulatory decisions. The regulatory path still requires a demonstration that the action caused the exceedance or violation, that there is a clear causal relationship, that the action was not reasonably controllable or preventable under mitigation-risk rules, and that the public has an opportunity to review the demonstration.

Who Benefits and How

State air quality agencies benefit because they gain a clearer route to ask EPA to discount smoke impacts from prescribed burns and similar wildfire-risk work. USFS prescribed-burn managers and BLM prescribed-burn managers benefit because air-quality consequences from state-approved mitigation burns may be less likely to trigger regulatory penalties or nonattainment consequences. Forestry companies and timber operations benefit when prescribed fire used for land management receives more favorable exceptional-event treatment. Electric utility vegetation-management programs benefit if controlled burns used to reduce wildfire risk can be handled under the same framework. Communities in wildfire-prone areas benefit if more mitigation burning reduces catastrophic wildfire risk.

Who Bears the Burden and How

EPA air-quality rulemaking staff must revise regulations within 18 months and review demonstrations tied to wildfire-risk mitigation actions. State, local, and tribal air regulators must prepare causal demonstrations and provide public review when seeking data exclusion. Environmental advocacy organizations may face a higher evidentiary burden when challenging exclusion of smoke-affected monitoring data. Communities exposed to prescribed-fire smoke may bear short-term health or nuisance risk even when the action lowers long-term wildfire danger. Regulated stationary sources still cannot use ordinary source noncompliance as an exceptional event because the bill keeps that exclusion.

Key Provisions

• Adds "actions to mitigate wildfire risk" to the Clean Air Act exceptional-event framework.
• Defines covered mitigation actions as prescribed fires or similar state-approved measures to reduce wildfire risk and severity.
• Requires EPA to revise exceptional-event regulations within 18 months.
• Allows exclusion of monitoring data influenced by wildfire-risk mitigation actions in regulatory determinations.
• Requires demonstrations of causation, clear causal relationship, lack of reasonable controllability or preventability, and public review.
• Keeps exclusions for ordinary stagnation, meteorological inversions, and source noncompliance.