Prescribed burns excluded from air quality data; schools get smoke grants.
S. 5045 — Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act of 2026 · Filed by John Curtis (R-UT) · 7 cosponsors · Introduced Jul 21, 2026 · Passed chamber
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What it does
The bill changes the Clean Air Act. Prescribed fires do not have to be counted in air quality data. States can ask to exclude prescribed fire smoke from reports. The bill gives money to schools and public buildings. The federal government pays up to 90 percent of the cost.
Who it affects
Schools and public buildings get federal money to protect people from wildfire smoke. States that do prescribed burns have less paperwork. People near prescribed burns may breathe smoke that is not counted in reports.
One thing to notice
Prescribed fire smoke can be left out of air quality data. People may not know how much smoke they breathe during burn season.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
7 cosponsors: 4 Democrats, 3 Republicans.
- Jul 21, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 21, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works”
- Sep 16, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Environment and Public Works. Reported by Senator Capito without amendment.”
- Sep 29, 2026 — Passed the Senate · Congress.gov: “Passed Senate without amendment by Unanimous Consent. (consideration: CR S5148-5150; text: CR S5149-5150)”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Words to know
- prescribed fires — Fires set on purpose by land managers to prevent bigger wildfires.
- air quality data — Facts about how clean or dirty the air is in a place.
- Clean Air Act — A federal law that sets rules for how clean the air must be.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (7,351 characters) on Jul 25, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,928 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
As of — page rendered 2026-11-03.
“Prescribed burns excluded from air quality data; schools get smoke grants.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s5045/simple Report an error
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