Colorado Democratic Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet today praised a proposed Superstorm Sandy emergency appropriations bill that includes $125 million for a program that would help communities in Colorado restore watersheds damaged by last summer's devastating wildfires.

The money is included in the Senate Appropriations Committee's $60.4 billion supplemental appropriations bill unveiled yesterday, and the $125 million would go toward supporting the Agriculture Department's Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) program that helps restore watersheds damaged by wildfires and drought.

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.

The two senators this week sponsored a bill, S. 3669, that would allocate $89.4 million to the financially strapped EWP program, which supports projects to restore damage to watersheds and drinking water infrastructure. It 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.

The senators say that months after the fires were extinguished, the communities affected by the High Park and Waldo Canyon blazes are still at high risk of water quality degradation, flood hazard and road washouts.

President Obama last week unveiled a $60.4 billion emergency request to Congress to help communities recover from Superstorm Sandy that included about $30 million for the EWP program. But in introducing their bill, Udall and Bennet said the scope of EWP funding in the president's request "is currently unclear" and does not address what they see as "a national backlog for an oversubscribed EWP program" administered by USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service.

They have no such complaints about the EWP program allocation in the Senate proposal.

"We're glad the Appropriations Committee is listening to Colorado and included a boost for this vital program," Bennet said today in a statement. "While this is only the first step in a long legislative process, we will continue to fight to keep these resources in the final version of the bill."

Udall said in a statement that if the watershed damage caused by the wildfires is not addressed quickly, the impacted communities could face "hundreds of millions of dollars of ongoing costs."

"Stabilizing and protecting these communities' watersheds is not only the right thing to do, but it also is the fiscally responsible approach," Udall said.

In total, the Senate bill would provide $810 million to address concerns about clean water programs, and $1 billion for flood control and coastal emergency programs.

Proponents of the Senate aid package say the bill will likely reach the Senate floor next week, bypassing committee consideration. That would leave a compromised window of opportunity for Congress, which already has a lame-duck calendar loaded with pending high-stakes fiscal matters, to consider the measure (E&E Daily, Dec. 13).

"As the U.S. Senate takes up this bill, I pledge to my constituents and colleagues that I will fight to ensure that Colorado does not get overlooked as we confront the terrible disasters our nation experienced this year," Udall said.

Click here to read the text of the Senate bill.

Streater writes from Colorado Springs, Colo.