Electric utility workers try to protect a transmission line on Aug. 23, 2020, after a pole burned in the Grizzly Creek fire in Glenwood Canyon. (Handout)
When Matthew raised the question about how Colorado utilities deal with wildfire risk, I found this piece in the Colorado Sun:
Wildfire risks will almost certainly worsen. The Fourth National Climate Assessment published in 2018 projected the annual area burned in the contiguous western United States will increase 200% to 300% by mid-century. In a sense, this year’s fires are merely a warm-up act. And this year’s hot summer will, in the future, be considered cool.
People have also been rapidly moving into the foothills of Colorado and other areas called the wildland-urban interface, an average increase of 2.5% annually from 1990 to 2010, according to a study conducted by Silvis Lab. As of 2017, half of all Coloradans lived in areas at risk to wildfires, the Colorado State Forest Service reported in 2018.
If wildfires keep up the way they are going, at least where trees and brush grow back slowly, I don’t think they’ll be enough unburned places left by 2050 to sustain a 200%-300% increase in acres burned (or they will be grass fires with not exactly the same kinds of suppression strategies nor impacts). It should also be pointed out that some of these seemingly scary WUI numbers are grasslands- which can also burn, but not exactly the same. In fact, some of the Headwaters maps show desert and grasslands as having the highest amount of undeveloped WUI.
The utility says 2,100 miles of its overhead distribution feeder lines in its service territory and 2,900 miles of transmission lines are within the wildfire risk zone that was developed by the Colorado State Forest Service. Its goal has been to “harden” the electrical delivery system and revise operations to reduce risk by increased use of tools such as infrared inspection to identify thermal “hot spots” with priority in high wildfire risk areas, LIDAR technology and drones to provide detailed pole-top inspections.
By the following June, the company had assembled a wildfire mitigation team to explore what types of additional or accelerated projects could further mitigate the risk of utility-caused ignitions. Xcel spent $10.7 million in 2019 while inspecting 2,900 miles of transmission lines and replacing 2,305 distribution wood poles among the 67,162 it inspected.
In its filings, Xcel identifies $590 million in wildfire mitigation programs from 2019 through 2025. At least some of these costs it seeks to recover through additional revenue via a rider on customer charge. If approved by the Public Utilities Commission, a typical residential electricity customer’s bill would increase by 49 cents a month, to $69.53, Xcel says on its website. The rider would be adjusted during the next four years.
It seems to make sense that the folks using the energy would have to pay for hardening the transmission lines.
“For California and Colorado, 2020 has been a record breaking year for wildfires.
In California, an unprecedented 4.2 million acres have burned, and in Colorado, the Cameron Peak fire has become the largest fire in Colorado’s history. California and Colorado rank first and third in the United States for properties at high risk for wildfire damage.
To make matters worse, insurers have been fleeing the California fire insurance market, and in response, California announced Thursday that it would extend its moratorium on barring insurers from dropping coverage.
For homeowners and insurers in these states, the stakes have never been higher.
Although these two states are both experiencing record breaking fire seasons, California and Colorado’s responses to this real and growing danger are quite different. California’s approach of creating price restrictions on insurance premiums has forced hundreds of thousands onto a last resort, bare-bones state plan.
Meanwhile, Colorado’s innovative approach incentivizes homeowner mitigation and allows premiums to fluctuate, keeping homeowners insured. To end this geographical disparity, California should look to Colorado as a model to give its citizens access to quality fire insurance protection at a time when they need it most.
The California Department of Insurance regulates insurance premiums to keep prices artificially low. The result is that in the face of unprecedented losses, claims have overwhelmed what insurers are able to charge in premiums. With wildfire loss predictions increasing, insurers began to pull out of the California market to avoid insolvency, leaving hundreds of thousands scrambling to find coverage.
In response, in December of 2019 the CDI placed a one-year moratorium on fire insurance non-renewals for homes that suffered a total loss during the 2019 California wildfires. Last week, this was extended to include roughly 2.1 million policyholders living within or adjacent to a 2020 wildfire, regardless of loss.
Colorado took a different approach and would be wise to stay the course. Colorado’s Division of Insurance allows for premium adjustments that better reflect differing levels of wildfire risk. Like California homeowners, Colorado homeowners in extreme wildfire risk zones can be denied or lose fire insurance coverage. When this occurs, unlike in California, Colorado homeowners can then opt into local mitigation programs like Boulder’s Wildfire Partners that assist and certify them through a process of modifying their home and their surrounding property to reduce the risk from wildfire. In exchange, many insurers in Colorado have agreed to cover certified homes.
With a robust insurance market and variable premiums, Colorado homeowners may have to invest in home-hardening efforts and may face a higher cost to insure homes in high risk areas, but Colorado has not needed to create a last-resort, state-enforced plan. Instead, it has protected conditions for a healthy and competitive insurance market.
California would be wise to learn from Colorado’s approach. Like Colorado, California should reduce its binding price controls, allowing private insurance companies to use risk-based pricing to insure people willing to pay for the risk they face. Not only will this allow more insurers to reenter the California markets, creating true safety nets when homes burn, but it will also send a price signal to homebuyers about which areas are most dangerous. To avoid premium spikes, the CDI should also look to Colorado’s mitigation certification programs and develop premium discounts for homeowners who adapt to the increased risk.
With homeowners, regulators, and insurers facing a new and catastrophic norm for wildfire seasons, policies that keep homeowners insured and increase private suppression efforts are key to protecting people and their properties. California can start by following Colorado’s model. These changes would keep more Californians on better insurance plans and, like their western neighbors, align incentives for individuals to adapt to better protect themselves for the future.”
Monique Dutkowsky is vice president of operations at PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center. Her work with Wildfire Defense Systems mapping fire risk is used by insurance companies throughout the West to help mitigate the impact of wildfires and quicken response times to vulnerable areas during fires. Holly Fretwell is vice president of outreach and a research fellow at PERC.
I’m curious about why some folks are against commercial timber harvesting. Some environmental groups — the Sierra Club, for example — oppose commercial timber harvesting in general, especially on federal lands. Some groups/folks support fuels reduction and thinning, as long as it doesn’t involve commercial timber sales. Of course, some of this is the legacy of past “industrial timber harvest” practices – large clearcuts with no stream buffers, etc – the “salvage rider,” and so on. On the other hand, other groups/folks may accept commercial harvests if the rotation age is long, and this includes entities that seek income though selling forest carbon. The Nature Conservancy harvests timber, usually in selective harvests, and uses the income to pay for managing its lands.
Is “commercial timber harvesting!” merely a rallying cry, a marketing ploy? A deeply held political or philosophical position? Do most people and groups support it, to some degree? What’s your take?
NPR News has a Q&A with Scott Stephens, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in wildfires and forest management, entitled “What’s Needed To Manage Wildfires.” Stephens’ Fire Science Laboratory has a large collection of forest restoration and fuels management research.
Excerpt:
KURTZLEBEN: With climate change essentially ensuring that conditions will continue to get more suitable for big fires, do you have any hope in the state and federal governments’ ability to manage future fire seasons?
STEPHENS: This is a great question. And I actually have a lot of hope. You know, I really do believe that we could do some work now in the next 10 to 20 years, which is actually probably the most important period now, to do our restoration thinning, do the work that actually says we’re going to go into a forest and we’re going to actually identify what we want to leave for restoration and we’re going to take the excess of that. We’re going to do the prescribed burning to get the fire back into these systems. And then again, managed wildfire. I know that it’s such a big issue for this state. Look at what’s going on. So many people losing homes, smoking out communities, huge cities for months at a time, huge impacts to water quality. Lake Oroville just had a huge fire in the middle fork of the Feather River, the largest tributary to Lake Oroville, which is the largest lake in the state water project.
These are enormous issues. On top of that, giant sequoia areas in southern Sierra Nevada last year – severe fires killed, we think, 10% of the giant sequoia old growth trees in the state. So it’s not as if we’re wondering what’s going to happen. It’s happening right now. So that just tells me that we have to get on the system to get this work in earnest. My estimate is we need to do 10 times more restoration thinning and prescribed burning to start to change the rudder of the ship.
On June 24, 2021 the District Court of Montana issued an unfavorable decision to the Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning the 2018 Revised Flathead Forest Plan and supporting 2017 biological opinion and their consideration of effects on grizzly bears and bull trout. (This was previously summarized here.)
On June 21, 2021 the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court of Montana’s decision that the Rails-to-Trails Act secured title to the government of an abandoned railroad right of way across plaintiff’s land on the Kaniksu National Forest. (This was also discussed here.)
On July 1, 2021 Sequoia ForestKeeper and Earth Island Institute filed a complaint in the Eastern District Court of California against the Plateau Roads Hazard Tree Project on the Sequoia National Forest regarding the alleged improper use of the categorical exclusion (CE 4) for road repair and maintenance.
On June 21, 2021, Plaintiffs filed a complaint in the United States Court of Federal Claims alleging a breach of contract by the Forest Service for revoking their ski area permit on the Umatilla National Forest after a dispute over Forest Service management of snowmobile use of the parking lot.
The Forest Service (Region 5) received a 90 Day Notice of Intent to Sue under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) dated June 21, 2021 from the Environmental Protection Information Center and others regarding trespass cannabis farms and the Forest Service’s handling of these trespass sites, including solid waste discarded and left on the Six Rivers, Shasta-Trinity, and Plumas National Forests. (This was also discussed here.)
This smoke map comes from Wildfire Today. https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/07/11/smoke-forecast-july-11-2021/
There’s a chapter in Priya Parker’s book “The Art of Gathering: Why We Meet and How it Matters.” called “Cause Good Controversy”. In it she talks about helping an architectural firm and she asked “what do you think is the most needed conversation for this group to have now?” If we think about the TSW group as a group, I’d like to ask folks what they think about this in a broader context. What are the conversations we haven’t yet had that might shed light on our ongoing disagreements? Please comment below if you have a suggestion.
As an example, I’d like to take the idea that “bad (as defined by human and ecological impacts) fires are caused by climate change.” We see this statement all the time in news stories. But perhaps there are two questions (1) “how much of what we see is caused by climate change in the broad sense (the climate is changing), (2) “what part of that specifically is caused by anthropogenic forces (including land use changes, and greenhouse gases of various kinds)?”. For whatever reason, (1) and (2) tend to get conflated in various accounts I’ve seen.
My view, based on exploring the models used in attribution studies, and having some idea about all the factors involved in big fires besides weather, is that no one really has a clue and it might not be all that helpful to pursue it because some of the uncertainty would be extraordinarily difficult to reduce, and possibly not worth the investment, when there are other questions that are more likely and more needed to be answered. But the conversation I would like to have specifically is: what difference would it make if if were 0%, 10% (caused by some mix of human factors) 30%, 50%, 70% or 100% (that would mean past fire suppression has 0 impact, which seems unlikely, but for the sake of argument..). Given that today we have what we have, and no one also understands exactly what will happen, in what timeframe, if we change greenhouse gases or other forcing agents according to what kind of timeline, how would the proportion attributed to AGW change our adaptation response to the situation we’re presented with today?
I don’t know and my thinking is “not much” but I’d like to start the conversation.
Belinda Joyner lives in Northampton County. The county’s population is predominantly Black.
“We’ve been disrespected all our lives,” said resident Belinda Joyner, 68, who has been fighting environmental racism in her community for decades, “and we’re still being disrespected.”
Check out the huge story feature from CNN on how the wood pellet industry is harming communities, destroying local economies and gobbling up forests all in the name of climate change even though it is hurting the climate not helping.
This is an unusual post for TSW.. there’s only a couple of times I’ve posted something about contacting Congress. If you live in a state with a Republican Senator and forest thinning for fuel reduction (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah), please consider contacting your Senator. This is a guest post from Brad Worsley of Novo BioPower in Arizona.
Biomass power generation can be a tough business! Unlike other power sources, using a non-homogenous fuel source brings complications when trying to create power. Imagine fuel like solar radiation, or Natural Gas, or pulverized coal…each brings a very constant and steady input of energy. Now imagine ground wood that comes in all different sizes, moisture content, BTU content, etc. If you combine that reality with the risk of being an independent power provider you might ask, why do we do it? The answer…it is personal to us! We felt the heat of catastrophic wildfire as it burned through our properties and changed the forest around our homes for generations. We recognize that we are helping resolve a generational issue and we want to make a difference. Senator John McCain said that fire and water are the two largest natural resource issues Arizona will face in the next 100 years. Novo Power is the keystone in the effort to restore our forests, mitigate high intensity fire, and restore the watershed function of our National Forests in Arizona. The issue that Novo Power faces is the reality that the renewable electron is not worth what it used to be worth. The high cost associated with renewable energy historically allowed forest restoration to piggy back but now with renewable energy at a fraction of what it used to cost, we face the reality that the renewable electron is the 4th or 5th most valuable part of what we do each day. Forest restoration, watershed mitigation, clean air, economic impact, increasing the safety of firefighters, and communities, water and energy infrastructure may all be more valuable than the renewable credit we produce. With that being said, we have to be creative about how we fund the cost of restoration. A critical component of that funding ought to be the Federal government. They are the stewards and have been the stewards of this land for over 100 years.
Senator Mark Kelly’s office is currently working on a Biomass PTC bill that would help a biomass facility that focuses on removing high hazard fuels from federal forests to receive a Production Tax Credit (PTC) to help offset the impact of federal taxes. A recap from Senator Kelly’s office is below:
Wildfires turn our forests into carbon emitters. Each year, around 8 million acres burn in the United States. The USDA Forest Service estimates about 80 percent of our national forests are at extreme risk of wildfire.
The Forest Service is trying to reduce wildfire severity and restore the health of our forests by removing dead, drought stricken, and insect infested trees from forestlands that are at high risk of wildfire.
The Forest Service is focusing on removing small hazard trees while avoiding harvesting large old-growth trees. Over the past 20 years, the work has been slow-going because there is no market for timber mills to use low-value timber for lumber.
Biomass energy production can provide a market for the Forest Service to accelerate its forest restoration projects. California is a leader in piloting this effort.
The bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the renewable electricity production tax credit (PTC) for open-loop biomass facilities engaged in forest restoration activities
The bill would apply the renewable energy PTC (1.5 cents per kW produced) for producers of electricity if their biomass facility is engaged in forest restoration activities authorized by the Forest Service.
The credit applies to existing units of open-loop wood biomass electricity production on a monthly basis, regardless of when they were placed into production, for a term up to 10 years
This tax credit would build upon but is separate from the existing production tax credit for open-loop biomass, which is for non-hazardous agricultural biomass waste and includes the following forest-related resources: mill and harvesting residues, precommercial thinnings, slash, and brush
Currently there is sufficient support from Democrats, we are desperately looking for a Republican Senator to step up and help sponsor this bill. We would encourage citizens to reach out and lobby their Republican Senators to stand up and help on this bi-partisan issue.
Bradley Worsley, President and CEO of Novo Biopower, LLC.
MBA – Supply Chain Management – Michigan State University
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Here’s a copy of the proposed bill. It’s only two pages. Check it out, and if you feel inclined, please give your R Senator a call!
The investigative drilling proposed along Homestake Creek in Eagle County, Colorado could dewater and destroy valuable wetlands. Photo by Marjorie Westermann.
Readers of The Smokey Wire may recall that Sharon posted about this project last November. You can check out that post and discussion/debate here. Below is the latest development.
DENVER—To safeguard irreplaceable wetlands and imperiled species in the headwaters of the Colorado River, a coalition of conservation groups today warned the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they will file a lawsuit in federal court if the agencies do not complete a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the planned and permitted geotechnical investigation on the greenback cutthroat trout and Canada lynx.
The Forest Service issued a special use permit for the Whitney Creek Geotechnical project on March 22, 2021. The feasibility assessment is the first step by the Cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora to build another large dam and reservoir in the Homestake Valley in the White River National Forest for diversion out of the Colorado River Basin to the Front Range.
“Nature’s bank account is severely overdrawn due to climate change and unsustainable use,” said Jen Pelz, the Wild Rivers Program Director at WildEarth Guardians. “The solution is not to build a bigger bank, but to conserve water, protect land and wildlife, and start living within the river’s means.”
The letter sent by WildEarth Guardians, Colorado Headwaters, Holy Cross Wilderness Defense Fund, Save the Colorado, the Colorado Chapter of the Sierra Club, and Wilderness Workshop details how the agencies failed to consider the effects of the investigative drilling, as well as the forthcoming dam and reservoir project, on listed species in violation of the Endangered Species Act. Listed species identified that exist in or downstream of the project include the threatened Canada lynx, Greenback cutthroat trout, and Ute Ladies’-tresses orchid, and the endangered bonytail chub, Colorado pikeminnow, humpback chub, and razorback sucker.
“After reviewing the record it’s clear that the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service failed to comply with the Endangered Species Act. The real impacts to listed species, including lynx and cutthroat trout, haven’t been adequately considered or disclosed,” said Peter Hart, Staff Attorney at Wilderness Workshop. “Today’s letter puts the agencies on notice of the violations we’ve identified; they now have 60 days to respond. If the issues we’ve raised remain unresolved, we could pursue a legal challenge in federal court.”
In addition to the harm to imperiled species detailed in the notice letter, the investigative drilling proposed along Homestake Creek in Eagle County, Colorado could drain and destroy valuable wetlands. Further, the exploration will lay the foundation for a destructive reservoir that would inundate hundreds of acres in the Holy Cross Wilderness Area while stealing more water from the Colorado River to the thirsty front range for use by the Cities of Colorado Springs and Aurora.
The groups urge the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the geotechnical investigation and related activities on threatened and endangered species as required by the Endangered Species Act before any investigatory drilling or other activities are undertaken in the Homestake Valley. If the agencies fail to do so, the groups will file a lawsuit in federal court after the 60-day notice period is complete.
“Colorado has not seen a transmountain diversion in 45 years. With climate change and the Colorado River losing 1% of flows each year, the Aurora and Colorado Springs’ Homestake project will never be built,” said Jerry Mallett, President of Colorado Headwaters
“Not one drop, not one,” said Gary Wockner of Save The Colorado. “Buckle up, because we will fight to stop this proposed new Colorado River dam and diversion project for as long and as hard as it takes.” Gary Wockner, Executive Director, Save The Colorado
“It is unfortunate that the U.S. Forest Service has chosen to facilitate the construction of a dam near a wilderness area in order to transfer yet more water from the West Slope to cities in the Front Range. The proposed dam and reservoir would drown wetlands and riparian habitat, which are naturally rare in the arid west comprising just 2 percent of the landscape,” explained Ramesh Bhatt, Chair, Conservation Committee of the Colorado Sierra Club. “Despite their rarity, wetland ecosystems are needed by greater than 80 percent of our native wildlife during some phase of their life cycle. Building this dam would be another devastating blow to Colorado’s biodiversity, which is already in crisis. This action by the Forest Service is not only contrary to its mandate to protect natural areas but is also illegal because the Service chose to cut corners to make its decision.”
“The proposed Whitney Creek project starting with destructive drilling of the irreplaceable Homestake Creek wetlands is an environmental atrocity and must be abandoned. The permit for drilling must be revoked. It is premised on several fallacies: that it will not damage the wetlands, that it will determine that there is no geologic reason not to build the proposed Whitney Creek Reservoir, and that the reservoir will be built. None of these things are true,” said Warren M. Hern, Chairman, of Holy Cross Wilderness Defense Fund. “The permit assumes that Congress will approve a loss of 500 acres from the Holy Cross Wilderness, which we will oppose, which the public will oppose, and which will not be approved by the Congress. Aside from irrevocable destruction of the Homestake Creek wetlands at and downstream from the proposed reservoir, the proposed reservoir is placed over a major geological fault, the Rio Grande Rift, which is a tectonic divergent plate boundary. Placing a reservoir at this site is pure madness and terminal stupidity. It would endanger the lives of those living downstream. We will oppose it by every legal means available.”
I couldn’t find a photo of a researcher helicoptering in.. so..
Thanks to Peter Williams for this piece in Nature Career Column to add to our collection of “similarities between less-developed countries and less developed parts of more-developed countries.”
The practice of scientists from wealthy nations visiting lower-income countries, collecting samples, publishing the results with little or no involvement from local scientists, and providing no benefit for the local community is referred to as neo-colonial, helicopter or parachute research1. T
From these experiences, I have made my own set of rules to follow to form meaningful collaborations and avoid helicopter research:
1. When you start a project in a new location, take the time to learn who is working or living at the site. These people could be an Indigenous group or scientists from another university, government agency or non-governmental organization. Contact them before you start your project and invite them to a meeting to introduce yourself.
2. In the field, take the time to meet as many people as you can, even if it’s just for coffee. Discover what you have in common. Maybe they have long-term data they want to share or they can provide advice for choosing one field site over another one.
3. Offer to collaborate and provide something in exchange, such as information, sample analysis, and, later, co-authorship.
4. Involve everyone throughout the process. Share your data and ask for advice and feedback as soon as you get some results. Don’t wait for the project to be finalized or the paper to be published. Send a report of your results, even if it’s just a graph and some pictures.
5. If they agree to collaborate, recognize the input that they have already had. Perhaps without you noticing, they could have improved your sampling design (by helping you choose your field sites) or helped with data collection (by taking you to a location or helping you to arrange entrance to a farm or a protected area, for example). And their local knowledge will be extremely valuable for interpreting the results.
An immediate solution to stop helicopter research is to recognize that knowledge comes in many forms, and diversity of understanding improves research. As a field scientist who works in many locations around the world, my knowledge of the natural world is limited to what I can gather on my relatively short field trips.
Without the knowledge of local people and their traditional culture that can span thousands of years, my conclusions could be misinformed or simply wrong. I have learnt that working with local people is not about charity, but about respecting the knowledge that does not follow the conventional rules of colonial science. Importantly, it is about ensuring research has an impact on and is valuable to the places we are lucky enough to study.
I’d only add to “who is working” perhaps federal and state professional resource specialists; who might not call themselves “scientists” but still know many things. And folks from any collaboratives in the area and…. I wish this approach were encouraged in researcher training.. perhaps it is today. Maybe all federal agencies could require evidence of this in their grant programs?
