Fix the forests, protect the grid

By Randy Howard

This is a lightly edited excerpt of testimony recently provided to the U.S. House’s Natural Resources Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries Subcommittee hearing titled, “Fix Our Forests for Affordable and Reliable Water and Power Supplies.”

Bruce Westerman’s Fix Our Forests Act (HR 471), which passed the House last January, provides a framework to move from reactive firefighting to proactive management. For utilities, three features of this bipartisan measure matter most: (1) streamlining hazard‑tree removal within and adjacent to utility corridors; (2) prioritizing high‑risk fire-shed areas so federal treatments align with where utility infrastructure is most exposed; and (3) providing a durable “Cottonwood fix” to avoid indefinite re‑consultations for restoration projects after rigorous environmental review.

Aligning federal schedules with utility investments yields tangible benefits. When USFS and BLM thinning projects are scheduled on the same horizon as utility grid‑hardening, we can coordinate conductor covering, pole replacements (steel or composite), selective undergrounding, and advanced sensors and protection settings — reducing ignition probability, preserving service during severe events and lowering costs by avoiding redundant mobilizations and duplicative surveys.

Expedited post‑fire permitting is essential: categorical exclusions for recovery and hardening activities within existing ROWs — where impacts are de minimis — should cover routine/emergency vegetation management, hazard‑tree removal adjacent to ROWs and repair/maintenance/hardening upgrades.

Bulk transmission lines in the West frequently span USFS and BLM lands across steep, fire‑prone terrain. As fire weather intensifies, the intersection between land management and grid operations becomes daily, not seasonal. Utilities, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and FERC can help by continuing targeted outreach to federal agencies and incident commands, establishing common playbooks for de‑energization near aerial operations and incorporating utility restoration priorities in joint information centers. Needed practical steps include shared Geographic Information System (GIS) layers identifying critical corridors and helicopter/air tanker routes; predefined criteria for smoke density and ash deposition that trigger patrols versus de‑energization; and mutual‑aid checklists for post‑fire access, hazard‑tree felling and staging — templates and memorandums of understanding that convert hours of negotiation into minutes during an incident.

The State of California has integrated wildfire risk into transmission planning. Beginning in 2020, the California Independent System Operator refined its planning process to identify long‑term, structural solutions to complement operational measures. Utilities across the state have accelerated investments in undergrounding targeted segments, covering conductors, replacing wood poles with steel or composite materials, and deploying high‑speed relays and sensors that reduce fault energy and ignition probability.

While existing NERC transmission‑planning standards do not name wildfire explicitly, planners are required to consider a broad set of credible contingencies. Ongoing NERC work on standards for extreme natural events will help ensure that planners assess multi‑asset exposures (e.g., parallel corridors through high‑risk fire-sheds) and develop remedial schemes and redundancy that account for fire behavior and suppression constraints.

Examples of effective hardening include: (1) covered conductor retrofits on windy ridgelines where tree strikes are most likely; (2) composite and/or steel poles in high‑heat corridors where wood pole integrity is compromised; (3) strategic undergrounding in choke points near communities and hospitals; and (4) segmented line recloser strategies with fast‑trip during red flag conditions that revert to standard settings when risk declines.

Electricity reliability means little if service becomes unaffordable. In several Western jurisdictions, strict liability regimes expose utilities — and ultimately their customers — to catastrophic costs even when utilities adhere to approved Wildfire Mitigation Plans (WMPs). Insurance markets price this uncertainty; capital costs rise; and dollars that should be directed to grid hardening and forest restoration instead fund premiums and litigation.

Congress can help by exploring new fault‑based liability frameworks that reflect today’s realities and provide a presumption of non‑negligence for utilities operating under approved WMPs and adhering to documented patrol and maintenance schedules. Pair that with a federal wildfire backstop or risk‑pooling mechanism and the cost of capital declines, allowing utilities to invest in prevention rather than paying after‑the‑fact claims. Ratepayers should not be the insurer of last resort for failures they did not cause and cannot control.

Accountability must accompany reform: transparent WMPs, third‑party audits, publicly reported patrol miles and tree trims and post‑incident reviews to assess settings, patrols, and crew deployment. Fault‑based does not mean lax — it means fair. Utilities negligent in maintenance or operations should be held responsible; utilities that meet or exceed standards should not be punished for wind‑thrown trees from unmanaged forests falling into lines. There has been progress in addressing these liability issues at the state level in the West — one example and model can be found in the State of Utah’s SB 224, which establishes a Utah fire fund to supplement insurance, sets administration, funding, and access rules and defines damage claim parameters by placing caps on noneconomic losses while assuring higher limits for physical injury and providing exceptions for wrongful death.

Read more about the full testimony here.

Randy Howard is the General Manager of the Northern California Power Agency.

_{*The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of EnergyPlatform.News.}