Nebraska committee hears bill to clarify 'controlled' and 'prescribed' burns, add permit data fields

LINCOLN, Neb. — The Natural Resources Committee on Thursday heard testimony on LB823, a bill to modernize Nebraska’s open-burning law by defining 'controlled burning' separately from 'prescribed burning' and by adding a checkbox and acreage field to permit forms to improve data collection.

Sponsor Sen. Dave Wardekamper, D-15, said the changes are modest but the result of months of collaboration with fire chiefs, landowners, conservation groups and researchers. "Prescribed fire is not just a land management tool. It is the most effective and cost efficient way we have for managing Nebraska's grass lands as Eastern red cedar encroachment spreads rapidly across our state," Wardekamper said, explaining the need to distinguish small debris/ditch burns from large, planned landscape burns.

Proponents — including Ryan McIntosh of the Nebraska State Volunteer Firefighters Association and Nebraska Fire Chiefs Association, Bill Hiatt of the Central Platte Natural Resources District, and Ed Hubbs of Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center (Audubon Great Plains) — told the committee the bill preserves local control and the authority of volunteer fire chiefs while improving clarity and creating a basis for future centralized reporting. McIntosh said a membership data collection across 200+ departments showed permits are issued in very different ways and under varying conditions statewide.

Committee members asked how data would be aggregated; witnesses said most local fire chiefs currently retain permit records and there is no single statewide repository now, but LB823 would make it easier to standardize what is recorded so a central collection approach could be developed later. Witnesses said existing prescribed-burn prescriptions already include weather, wind speed, relative humidity and water-supply considerations; the bill would not create new fees or additional technical requirements for conducting burns.

Senators also discussed red-flag or statewide burn bans and the Plum Creek Fire example; witnesses said when a statewide ban is issued there is no local discretion to burn. Senator Wardekamper closed the hearing saying definitions must be 'ironed out' and noting university researcher Derek Twidwell’s interest in future tracking. The committee recorded eight proponents, no opponents and no neutral testimony before closing the record.