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Stakeholders say federal staffing cuts threaten Western water, power reliability
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Summary
Witnesses and lawmakers at a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing warned that recent staffing reductions and office closures at federal water and power agencies are degrading forecasting, project delivery and grid reliability across the Western United States.
Witnesses at a House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries oversight hearing warned that staffing cuts and office closures at federal water and power agencies are undermining the delivery of water services, hydropower operations and disaster forecasting across the West.
The concern was voiced by multiple witnesses and subcommittee members who said layoffs and local office closures at agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation, the Power Marketing Administrations and NOAA are already reducing technical capacity and hampering responses to drought, wildfire and storm threats.
Representative Hoyle criticized the Trump administration’s workforce actions, saying, “the administration and the DOGE effort has been haphazardly gutting federal agencies.” Ranking Member Huffman said the cuts have removed “thousands of positions, engineers, dam operators, hydrologists, emergency operators,” and warned of lost institutional knowledge and threats to grid reliability. Michelle Bushman of the Western States Water Council told the subcommittee that closures and staff reductions “have created uncertainty about the future of federal support for water management and related disaster mitigation.”
Witnesses described how local federal-office reductions slow coordination and data-sharing that states and water managers use for drought planning, flood and wildfire response and fisheries operations. Jim Webb, president and CEO of Lower Valley Energy, gave a concrete example, saying mass firings at the Bonneville Power Administration left “not enough linemen in Central Oregon to repair a high voltage transmission line,” adding, “They left us with 1.” Webb and other witnesses also emphasized that the Power Marketing Administrations are funded by ratepayers rather than by annual taxpayer appropriations and that staffing cuts therefore do not produce federal budget savings but can raise costs and reduce service for customers.
Witnesses urged Congress to clarify priorities, restore or stabilize staffing where expertise is essential, and ensure that funding and grant programs continue to reach local governments, tribes and small systems. Bushman highlighted that small water systems “serving under 10,000 people face limited technical expertise” and said regionalizing technical and managerial resources could help those systems.
The subcommittee asked panelists to submit written recommendations, including ideas for streamlining permitting and for stabilizing funding and staffing, and left the hearing record open for follow-up responses.
