The bipartisan wildfire bill is ready. Oregon’s US senators should help pass it.
By Kurt Miller, Northwest Public Power Association
Federal law allows utilities operating on national forest land to remove hazardous trees only within 10 feet of a power line. In Western forests, where trees routinely reach 100 feet tall and a single ignition can drive hundreds of thousands of acres of destruction, 10 feet is not a safety standard — it is a disaster waiting to happen.
The Fix Our Forests Act would extend that authority to 150 feet, alongside streamlined federal permitting for wildfire mitigation work and tighter judicial review timelines on fuel-reduction projects long delayed by litigation.
The bill has cleared the House by a 279-141 vote. It has also passed the Senate Agriculture Committee by a vote of 18 to 5, with Democratic support from senators in California, Minnesota, and Colorado. Four Western governors of both parties — California’s Gavin Newsom (D), Montana’s Greg Gianforte (R), Colorado’s Jared Polis (D) and Utah’s Spencer Cox (R) — have endorsed it. Utility operators across the West are calling for it.
But it does not have the support of Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
These two senators have instead backed the Wildfire and Grid Reliability Act, a $15 billion-per-year matching grant program funding utility infrastructure investments: undergrounding lines, hardening poles, vegetation management within existing rights-of-way.
Don’t get me wrong: Those investments have genuine value. But they address only what utilities can do on their own lines and existing rights-of-way. They don’t touch the federal-land bottleneck — and that’s where the most consequential wildfire risk in the West actually lies.
Take Midstate Electric Cooperative in La Pine, Ore. The co-op spent years seeking permits to clear trees growing within six feet of a power line through the Deschutes National Forest. During that wait, La Pine faced three major wildfires in under five years. The city manager described the community as living with flames knocking on the back door. The permits moved only after Midstate’s CEO testified before Congress.
Oregon’s experience isn’t unique. From the Sierra Nevada to the Northern Rockies, utilities and the communities they serve are running into the same federal permitting wall, at exactly the moment wildfire risk is intensifying. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the federally designated reliability authority for the bulk power system, identified wildfire as a growing risk to electric reliability across the West in its 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment released this month.
The report specifically called for vegetation management beyond traditional rights-of-way to protect critical infrastructure. The recommendation comes from the grid’s own reliability authority, not from industry, and it lines up with exactly what the Fix Our Forests Act would authorize.
Critics have characterized the legislation as a logging giveaway. That misreads both the bill and the constituency pushing hardest for it. The hazard-tree provisions apply to vegetation within striking distance of energized infrastructure, not commercial timber stands. The fuel-reduction provisions target overstocked, fire-prone forests where decades of suppressed fire and stalled federal management have built up the conditions that drive catastrophic burns.
A more substantive objection from environmental groups runs differently: that a depleted Forest Service workforce can’t make careful site-specific decisions about expanded management authority. They have a point about this. But the answer to under-resourced federal management is to rebuild agency capacity, not to freeze its tools at levels that have allowed catastrophic fuel loads to accumulate.
The community-owned utilities I represent — electric cooperatives, people’s utility districts, and municipal utilities — do not profit from what gets cut. They have no stake in what gets logged. But they do have a stake in whether the lines stay up when fire moves through, and whether their members get stuck with catastrophic ignition liability when the federal forests around them burn.
The timing is unforgiving. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek (D) warned last month of a “potentially severe” 2026 fire season, citing drought emergencies in nine counties and the warmest winter on record. Federal forecasters project above-normal fire risk east of the Cascade Mountains beginning in June and expanding through much of the Western U.S. by August. The Inland West looks especially dangerous, plagued by years of persistent drought.
The bipartisan coalition is already in place. Senators from both parties have voted for the bill. Western governors have endorsed it. The utilities serving fire country are asking for it. The fire calendar doesn’t pause for institutional rebuilding. Oregon’s senators should join them, before the next fire makes the case the hard way.
Kurt Miller is CEO and executive director of the Northwest Public Power Association, which represents more than 150 consumer-owned electric utilities serving over 10 million residents across ten Western states and British Columbia.
