House subcommittee hears unified push to speed forest treatments to protect water and power

Chairwoman of the House Natural Resources subcommittee opened an oversight hearing titled “Fix our forests for affordable and reliable water and power supplies,” urging Senate action on legislation the House passed last year. Witnesses from utilities, water providers, and landowner groups told members that decades of fire suppression and limited on-the-ground capacity left many national forests overstocked, increasing wildfire severity and harming downstream water and power systems.

Eamon O’Toole, a fifth-generation rancher and member of the Family Farm Alliance, described conditions at the Colorado River headwaters and said experimental forest projects that use mechanical thinning and prescribed fire can improve watershed function. “By going in there and doing this mastication work … with the right kind of prescribed forest fires,” O’Toole said, those…