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APS, State Forester and county groups outline multifaceted wildfire-mitigation work and need for sustained funding
Summary
Arizona Public Service, the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management and regional partners described vegetation management, grid-hardening, monitoring and cooperative thinning projects and said sustained funding and interagency partnership are necessary to reduce wildfire risk.
Arizona Public Service, the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management and regional partners told the Arizona House committee that preventing catastrophic wildfire requires a combination of vegetation management, grid upgrades, modern monitoring and interagency cooperation.
At the hearing Jan. 31, Andrew Rabo, manager of the Forestry and Resource Management program at Arizona Public Service, described an “integrated vegetation management” approach covering APS’s service territory and said the company has kept its system on a maintenance cycle since 2016. “Our entire system has been on cycle since 02/2016,” Rabo said.
Scott Borgenkircher, APS’s director of Forestry and Fire Mitigation, outlined five pillars of the utility’s work: vegetation management (including defensible space and hazard-tree removal), grid hardening (steel poles, fire mesh and upgraded fuses), regular asset inspection, expanded meteorology and fire‑modeling capabilities, and operational mitigations such as changing settings and public-safety power shutoffs. He told legislators APS spends “over $110,000,000 a year specific on improvements to combat fire risk.”
Thomas Torres, director of the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management (DFFM), told the committee DFFM treated more than 23,000 acres in 2024 and aims to treat 30,000 acres in 2025. “We accomplished treating over 23,000 acres,” Torres said, adding that DFFM’s work includes thinning, prescribed fire and collaborating with local partners on community wildfire protection plans.
Woody Klein, representing the Eastern Arizona Counties Organization, described the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) and local thinning projects that produce material used for power generation. Klein said ECO coordinates with agencies and utilities to move slash from thinning projects to power plants where possible.
Why it matters: witnesses said no single tactic suffices. Utilities emphasized reliability investments and monitoring; DFFM emphasized treating acreage and community wildfire protection planning; counties and local groups underscored the scale of land needing work and the logistics of moving biomass.
Both utilities and the state agency urged continued funding and interagency cooperation. Several presenters and lawmakers argued state appropriations and federal cooperation are necessary to expand thinning, prescribed fire and monitoring across the millions of acres at risk.
