Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) yesterday urged the House to include funding in its Superstorm Sandy relief bill to repair Western watersheds damaged by last year's severe wildfires.

Bennet said the chamber should boost funding for the Agriculture Department's emergency watershed protection program (EWP), which supports projects to restore damage to watersheds and drinking water infrastructure.

Bennet's request comes days after the Senate passed a $60.4 billion Sandy relief bill that included a $125 million boost for EWP. That bill died yesterday when the 112th Congress came to a close, and the House is expected to take a fresh look at the issue beginning today.

This past summer was the most destructive wildfire season in Colorado's history. The High Park blaze near Fort Collins and the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs burned tens of thousands of acres, destroyed nearly 600 homes and at one time displaced tens of thousands of residents. USDA estimated it would cost about $20 million to mitigate watershed damage from the two blazes, Bennet said.

Money in the Senate bill could have been used to repair damaged watersheds in Colorado's El Paso, Larimer and Weld counties, Bennet said in yesterday's statement.

"In the West, we all know how precious water is -- especially right now during the worst drought in years," he said. "That is why the Colorado delegation came together in a bipartisan and bicameral way to fight for these valuable resources at the end of the last Congress."

The cash-strapped EWP program addresses debris-clogged stream channels, unstable stream banks and damaged public infrastructure, as well as damaged upland sites stripped of protective vegetation by fire or drought.

A spokeswoman for Bennet said the program has a balance of about $10 million remaining, but a backlogged need of $116 million for disasters across 19 states. Those projects do not include an estimated $30 million to $40 million in additional need from Sandy, she said. EWP funding is allocated only for emergencies and is not an annually appropriated line item.

In late November, Bennet, along with Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Colorado Reps. Jared Polis (D), Doug Lamborn (R) and Cory Gardner (R), asked appropriators in both chambers to support additional funding for EWP.

Bennet's proposal may be a tall order in the House, where fiscal conservatives have opposed using the Sandy relief bill as a vehicle for pet projects.

The chamber today is expected to take up a limited $9 billion bill for immediate assistance for hurricane flood insurance before moving to a broader $51 billion bill in the coming weeks.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who chaired the House Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee in the last Congress, said watershed repair in Western states is an important issue, but it is not an emergency.

"You can't put a bunch of stuff on an emergency relief bill just because it's a good idea," he said yesterday. "You have to let it go through regular order."

Kingston said that his mother and sister live in Colorado and that he has seen the devastation from wildfires.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Appropriations subpanel that funds the Interior Department and whose state also experienced severe wildfires last summer, said he believes the Sandy relief bill should address only areas affected by the storm.

Likewise, Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) said he would be hesitant to include wildfire relief funding in the Sandy bill, unless it appeared that was the only vehicle for it to move forward.

"We've got to be sensible and find pay-fors," Tipton said.

But Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said he would support Bennet's proposal, in addition to supporting putting more money into the Forest Service's budget for wildfire prevention.

"There are tens of millions of acres of diseased, dying forests that need fuel reduction thinning, and the Forest Service doesn't have the budget to do that," he said. "So we wait until the forest catches fire and we spend more than a billion dollars a year fighting fires."

The Senate last month turned down an amendment by Udall and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to the Sandy relief package that would have restored $653 million in funding for the Forest Service's wildfire management fund (E&E Daily, Dec. 19, 2012).

The additional funding would be spent to pre-position ground crews, hot shots and air support in places at risk of severe wildfires, in addition to supporting the purchase of additional large air tankers used as an initial attack against blazes while ground crews get in position. It would also help fund hazardous fuel removal where forests abut communities.