Utilities and water providers warn unchecked forest decline raises bills, outages and insurance costs
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Summary
Water providers and public-power officials told a House subcommittee that delaying forest treatments increases the risk of catastrophic wildfire that raises recovery costs, forces public-safety power shutoffs, and drives insurance premiums up for households and utilities.
Testifying to the House Natural Resources subcommittee, representatives of municipal utilities, a public power agency, and a major water utility described how unhealthy forests and catastrophic wildfires raise costs for ratepayers and threaten service reliability.
Travis (transcript name variants) of Colorado Springs Utilities told members that the city depends on headwater areas—roughly 70% of the city's water supply comes from federal forested lands—and that wildfire can simultaneously threaten both water and hydropower generation. “A single catastrophic wildfire can simultaneously threaten both our water supply and our power generation,” he said, arguing that shared stewardship and federal investment in treatment projects are necessary to protect customers.
Randy Howard of the Northern California Power Agency said utilities face three major challenges: slow federal approvals for removing hazard trees near power lines, necessary public-safety power shutoffs during extreme weather when many hazard trees are present, and post-fire sedimentation that reduces hydropower capacity and reservoir storage. He supported categorical NEPA/NHPA exclusions in the House bill to allow rapid hazard-tree removal and a streamlined rebuilding process, and proposed exploring fault-based liability standards and a federal wildfire risk pool to stabilize costs.
Madeleine McDonald of Denver Water described the utility’s proactive investments and their returns: Denver Water’s partnership has invested roughly $96 million in proactive forest work and the agency cited a CSU analysis that the initial $60 million of work avoided about $234 million in downstream costs. McDonald emphasized that most severe impacts occur after fires and recommended authorizing post-fire preparedness as an allowable activity under existing programs and securing dedicated funding for the NRCS Emergency Watershed Protection program.
Members pressed witnesses about whether the House bill’s categorical exclusions—some of which were removed in the Senate version—would reduce costs and insurance rates. Witnesses said the exclusions and faster project delivery would reduce ignition risk and anticipated that reducing wildfire risk should lower insurance premiums over time, though they warned that insurance-market changes depend on broader risk reductions and insurer decisions.
The witnesses framed the problem as part technical (timely permitting, staffing, wood utilization markets) and part financial (funding to execute treatments and to restore impacted watersheds), and urged a mix of prevention, rapid post-fire recovery, and careful coordination across agencies and jurisdictions.
