Today, the Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held an oversight hearing titled “Fix Our Forests for Affordable and Reliable Water and Power Supplies.” Subcommittee Chair Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) released the following statement in response:

“Our neglected federal forests create higher wildfire risk, reduce water availability, and disrupt critical energy infrastructure. We must review the science, evaluate current management practices, and identify solutions that restore forest health while strengthening the reliability of our water and power systems. The federal government abdicated its responsibility to maintain the health of our federal forests through decades of unsafe forest management, and House Natural Resources Committee Republicans are prioritizing sound conservation policies once again.”

Background

The hearing examined how decades of forest mismanagement and a century of fire suppression have left millions of acres of federal forests overstocked, unhealthy and highly prone to catastrophic wildfire.  This situation threatens to further increase the costs of reliable water and power supplies across the West.

Overgrown, fire-prone forests disrupt natural hydrological processes, reduce snowpack retention and diminish downstream water availability, even in the absence of wildfire. When fires do occur, they damage dams, canals, reservoirs, transmission lines and hydropower facilities, forcing power shutoffs, curtailing electricity generation and threatening irrigation and drinking water supplies for communities, farms and businesses.

The hearing highlighted the growing consensus that active forest management including thinning, prescribed burns and other treatments, can restore forest resilience while protecting critical water and energy infrastructure.