Baucus promotes funding measure
Proposed trust fund would help cover fire-fighting costs
U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., plans to try a second time to create a trust fund to cover cost overruns in fighting fires in federal forests.
The effort is partly prompted by a National Interagency Fire Center prediction that forest fires will be worse than normal this year, Baucus told about 100 members of the Montana Logging Association Saturday at the Red Lion Hotel in Kalispell.
The fund is expected to be proposed within a couple months as a one-time Congressional appropriation of $1 billion. The money would go to an interest-earning account that would be used only when the U.S. Forest Service's annual nationwide firefighting budget is exhausted. Baucus tried unsuccessfully to set up such a fund last year.
Baucus said the Forest Service frequently exhausts its firefighting budget each year, and has to take money from other programs to deal with the red ink.
Baucus is optimistic that the measure will receive heavy support.
Meanwhile, Baucus noted that the timber industry - which employs about 7,000 people in Montana - has taken many hits.
He said one potential new market for wood products is energy.
Baucus noted that sugar-based ethanol powers about half of the cars in Brazil, adding that corn-based ethanol is not doing as well in the United States.
He said Celunol Corp. recently finished building a pilot-scale facility in Jennings, La., as part of what is the United States' first plant to convert sugar cane, wood chips and other biomass materials into ethanol for fuel.
That pilot facility is capable of producing 50,000 gallons of fuel per year. Its purpose is to work out the technological problems in the process, according to the U.S. Department of Energy and the Renewable Fuel Association.
The main plant is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2007, and to be capable of producing almost 1.5 million gallons of fuel per year.
Baucus said tax credits should be explored to encourage this type of technological development.