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 treatments can increase forest and watershed resilience. He emphasized speed and local partnerships as necessary to get projects completed.

Travis (transcript name variants: introduced as Travis Deal/Diehl and self-identifying in testimony) representing Colorado Springs Utilities explained the interdependence of water and electric infrastructure in mountain communities, noting that roughly 70% of Colorado Springs’ water supply comes from headwater areas on federal lands. He urged Congress to preserve and expand tools such as Good Neighbor Authority and to restore funding so utilities and land managers can scale treatments to protect reservoirs and transmission lines.

Madeleine McDonald, watershed scientist at Denver Water, described Denver Water’s From Forest to Faucets partnership and the utility’s investment of about $96 million in proactive management. McDonald cited a Colorado State University retroactive analysis Denver Water commissioned that found the utility’s first $60 million of proactive work avoided roughly $234 million in downstream costs from wildfire impacts to water quality and infrastructure. She urged stable staffing and sustained appropriations for federal programs that help communities prepare for and recover from wildfires, and recommended expanding collaborative programs and authorizing post-fire preparedness activities.

Randy Howard, general manager of the Northern California Power Agency, stressed that utilities face lengthy permitting and approval processes to remove hazard trees adjacent to rights-of-way, and supported categorical exclusions under NEPA and NHPA for time-critical hazard-tree removal and expedited post-fire rebuilding. He and other witnesses also called for liability reforms to reduce the risk that utilities or their ratepayers bear disproportionate costs from wildfire litigation.

Members’ questions focused on where Congress can act: funding to hire and retain federal staff, streamlined authorities (including categorical exclusions captured in the House bill), improved coordination across federal agencies, expanded Good Neighbor Authority agreements, and dedicated post-fire funding such as to the Natural Resources Conservation Service Emergency Watershed Protection program. Witnesses repeatedly said that prevention and accelerated treatments cost less than reacting to large catastrophic fires and post-fire recovery.

The subcommittee kept the record open for written questions and entered letters and materials into the record. No formal vote occurred during the hearing; members urged colleagues in the Senate to act on the House-passed Fix Our Forest Act.