Sponsors (9)
The bill aims to greatly improve wildfire forecasting, smoke/health warnings, data sharing, and coordinated response—benefiting residents, responders, and researchers—but does so by adding new federal spending, administrative and implementation burdens, and data/privacy risks that may limit how quickly and equitably benefits reach communities.
Residents in wildfire-prone areas (rural and urban), homeowners, and emergency responders will get more accurate and timely fire‑weather, smoke, and air‑quality forecasts and impact‑based decision support, improving evacuation decisions, health protections, and reducing property loss.
Federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies and responders will have clearer roles, annual coordination processes, and independent oversight to reduce duplication and better target mitigation and operational response.
Researchers, planners, and private‑sector innovators will gain improved data stewardship, a centralized public digital platform, interoperable datasets, and clearer technical definitions that enable reuse, modeling, and new services.
Taxpayers may face substantial new and ongoing costs from authorized funding, expanded pilots, commercial data purchases, computing resources, and new staffing, increasing federal budgetary pressure.
Federal, state, and local agencies and staff will incur added administrative burdens from coordination requirements, reporting, GAO reviews, and planning that could divert time from frontline forecasting and response.
Many recommendations, pilots, and planned improvements risk being delayed or never implemented because of short sunsets, multi‑year report timelines, or dependence on future appropriations and interagency cooperation.
Based on analysis of 28 sections of legislative text.
Creates and funds a NOAA-led federal fire-weather program to improve wildfire prediction, observations, modeling, data access, testbeds, incident meteorologists, and interagency coordination through FY2030.
Introduced January 29, 2025 by Maria E. Cantwell · Last progress September 11, 2025
Creates a coordinated federal fire-weather and wildfire services program at NOAA to improve prediction, detection, modeling, observations, and decision support for wildfires, wildfire smoke, and post-fire hazards. It requires new interagency coordination bodies, a fire-weather testbed, an Incident Meteorologist Service, greater data sharing and open data policies, and multiple agency plans and assessments. Authorizes multi-year funding for NOAA activities through FY2030, directs GAO and agencies to produce several reports and workforce assessments, and provides a one-year premium-pay waiver and personnel-planning requirements for certain Department of Commerce, Agriculture, and Interior employees involved in wildland firefighting and incident response in 2025.