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Arizona utilities outline wildfire mitigation plans and push for large-scale forest restoration
Summary
At a Natural Resources Committee meeting, Arizona Public Service, Tucson Electric Power and Salt River Project described vegetation cycles, grid-hardening measures and detection systems they say reduce wildfire risk; The Salt River Project and conservation groups urged expanded forest restoration to protect watersheds and water supplies.
Arizona utilities told the Arizona State Senate Natural Resources Committee that investments in vegetation management, grid hardening and new detection technology are central to reducing wildfire risk — and that landscape-scale forest restoration is needed to protect watersheds and communities.
Andrew Bridal, manager of the Forestry and Resource Management Group at Arizona Public Service, said APS places every feeder on a vegetation-management cycle and has kept the system on schedule. “Our entire system has been on cycle since 2016,” Bridal said, describing multi-year rotation work across the company’s four geographic divisions and the approvals APS coordinates with public-land managers.
Wade Ward, APS’s manager of wildfire state resources, described complementary programs that identify hazard trees, create defensible space around poles and harden infrastructure. He told the committee that monitoring investments will increase soon: “By May 1, 2025, we will have over a 100 weather stations and a 100 PTZ cameras,” Ward said, and added that those cameras and Pano AI units provide situational awareness that is shared with federal, state and tribal partners.
Ward and Bridal cited a recent Horton fire near Payson as an example of how detection, preworked right-of-way and coordination with incident management helped limit impacts. “Our AI camera was able to detect that fire, really before, even the Payson Raider district had detected it,” Ward said, and Bridal added that APS’s preworked right-of-way supported suppression tactics and helped keep power service intact for affected communities.
Tucson Electric Power told the committee it uses a risk-based plan with regular inspections and aerial and ground patrols. Alec Acuna, director for construction services at TEP, said the utility runs a distribution visual-inspection program that reviews system distribution assets every three years and generates work orders to fix deteriorated crossarms, poles and other equipment before they fail.
Salt River Project emphasized the watershed consequences of high-severity fires and described a large partnership effort aimed at reducing fuel and restoring forest health. Elvie Barton, SRP senior manager for water and forest sustainability, said SRP supplies about 800,000 acre-feet of water annually and that roughly 1,000,000 acres of forested lands in SRP’s drainage areas are “unhealthy, overgrown and at risk for catastrophic wildfires.” SRP said it has partnered with federal and state agencies, private companies and nonprofits and has helped leverage more than $21 million in partner funding for restoration projects.
Nicole Kennan, Arizona Business Unit forest program manager for The Nature Conservancy, urged the committee to support measures that lower the cost and increase the scale of restoration work. Kennan cited research and state studies showing wildfire severity, post-fire flooding and smoke pose statewide economic and public-health risks, and said investments in prevention return multiple dollars per dollar invested: “For every dollar that’s invested in forest restoration, we can expect up to a $7 return,” she told the committee.
Committee members questioned utility representatives about how mitigation compares with suppression costs, community notification and restoration priorities. Utility staff and witnesses emphasized that mitigation and early detection reduce suppression costs and that close coordination with incident commanders and first responders is essential for life-safety and restoration work. Several speakers cautioned that forest-health work requires federal approvals, transportation and local infrastructure for biomass removal, and that expanding local processing markets is necessary to scale restoration.
The committee did not take further action at the hearing but members said they will follow up with agencies and utilities on district-level plans, restoration financing and how mitigation programs affect vulnerable rural communities.
