Suppose you’re trying to cut back your threat of heart problems, the world’s main reason for demise. You may go for a more healthy food regimen, train, or a prescription drug to decrease your levels of cholesterol. Your first impulse is probably going not to consider how a lot you’ll need to pay the hospital after you endure a coronary heart assault.
But in assembly the rising menace of wildfire, Washington’s Legislature appears to be heading into an issue akin to the above analogy. Lawmakers gutted funding earlier this 12 months from a landmark regulation to assist forestall catastrophic wildfire. And now, legislators are discussing establishing a wildfire victims fund for blazes brought on by energy utilities’ infrastructure — to be used after wildfires have destroyed neighborhoods.
Lawmakers have it backward. Their highest precedence within the upcoming legislative session must be to restore full funding to prevent blazes and better safeguard the state from fire risks.
That’s to not say a wildfire victims compensation fund isn’t a worthwhile choice to discover. However the utility-funded proposal, floated by former Gov. Jay Inslee in a latest Spokesman-Assessment op-ed, warrants skepticism for at the very least three causes.
First, Inslee isn’t working alone. He has been retained by Singleton Schreiber, a agency famend for profitable billions of {dollars} in wildfire lawsuits for purchasers. They advocated for and the California Meeting created a $21 billion security web for fires decided to be brought on by utility strains or infrastructure. Damages from a single firestorm in Southern California this January will seemingly extinguish everything of the fund, which prompted California lawmakers to name for an $18 billion replenishment.
Second, to create the backstop, the fund will seemingly be paid by mountaineering utility ratepayers’ payments and people of the utility’s shareholders. Already, Puget Sound Power is elevating electrical energy charges by 18.6%, primarily to fulfill clear power transition targets. Tacking on one other $3 to residents’ payments, as occurred in California, is one other spike within the excessive value of dwelling Washingtonians face.
Lastly, the state’s patchwork of utilities could be very completely different from California’s, the place simply two investor-owned utilities cowl huge swaths of the state. Washington’s investor-owned utilities — the one ones required beneath Inslee’s proposal to pay into the fund — serve solely a few third of all Washingtonians, whereas the opposite two-thirds are served by community-owned utilities like Seattle Metropolis Gentle.
A bolder and extra applicable backstop solution ought to come on the federal degree. From North Carolina to Hawaiʻi, wildfire has develop into a serious nationwide downside. The purpose must be widening a coalition of congressional members whose districts have been devastated by wildfire.
There’s no debate that local weather change is fueling hotter, drier situations that enhance wildfire hazard, and threat for utilities whose infrastructure crisscrosses the state. To satisfy the problem, the Legislature this 12 months additionally passed a bill to mandate that investor-owned utilities report back to the state how they’re mitigating that threat. Puget Sound Power stated this week the utility is spending practically $140 million in 2025 and 2026 to clear brush close to strains, improve infrastructure and extra to fulfill the problem.
Right here’s the most effective factor state lawmakers can do now: Make sure the state’s Division of Pure Sources can do the very important work that helps hold Washingtonians and their communities safer from wildfire. That features snuffing fires before they grow out of control; restoring forest well being by thinning smaller conifers and burning underbrush that forestalls the worst fires; and serving to susceptible communities “harden” neighborhoods by eradicating landscaping and different burnable supplies from round properties.
The first purpose of the quick legislative session must be shoring up fire-safe communities first — not making a piggy financial institution within the aftermath of the destruction.
