After another catastrophic wildfire season in the West, it is clear that Utah can no longer put off needed investments to protect our forests and critical sources of drinking water. The consequences of delaying these essential investments grow yearly and the stakes have never been higher.

The Yellow Lake Fire, Utah’s largest in 2024, illustrates the benefit of such investments. During one of the hottest months on record, 33,000 acres burned, forcing communities to evacuate and endangering water supplies for millions. Preventative treatments like fuel breaks, implemented in 2020 by the United States Forest Service and its partners, were used by fire managers to slow the spread of fire. The fire was completely contained three weeks later and did not burn as severely as fire managers had initially feared. Forest health treatments in the Upper Provo Watershed, partially funded by the Central Utah Water Conservancy District and Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative, helped contain the fire. Another recent fuel reduction project in Tooele County, funded through Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative, was utilized by firefighters to suppress the South Willow Fire.

On the flip side, Utah water ratepayers have already borne the cost of neglect to forests and watersheds. In 2018, the Dollar Ridge Fire caused severe sediment runoff into the Duchesne River, forcing the Central Utah Water Conservancy District to invest $28 million in retrofitting the Duchesne Valley Treatment Plant — a cost ultimately paid by customers and taxpayers. This burden is unsustainable and unnecessary when forest health treatments offer up to a 600% return on investment by protecting property, preserving water quality and maintaining healthy forest conditions.

These fires are a wake-up call. Infrastructure costs should not fall on water ratepayers alone. While Utah water utilities and our partners have made progress in reducing wildfire risks in key watersheds, the wildfire crisis demands even greater levels of collaboration and funding — and both are needed now from Utah’s state Legislature.

We know that strategic tree thinning combined with prescribed burning can reduce the severity of catastrophic wildfires by up to 72%, according to the U.S. Forest Service. These treatments use a combination of thinning (by hand or machinery) and prescribed fire to reduce overgrown vegetation and create buffers that firefighters can use to contain blazes.

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Recent efforts have emerged to drive funding toward forest health treatments like these in Utah’s watersheds. For example, the Utah Resilience Fund was created to bolster funding for wildfire prevention and watershed protection in the Weber and Jordan watersheds respectively. The fund allows utilities, state and county governments, and other partners to pool resources and enable large-scale investments in these treatments. The Weber Resilience Fund, managed by Summit County, has raised over $7.8 million to date.

Despite efforts like the Utah Resilience Fund, funding uncertainties continue to challenge the long-term viability of forest health treatments. Additionally, less-intensive maintenance treatments will need to be repeated every five to 10 years to maintain forest health and resilience. To help mitigate this challenge, the Utah Legislature created an endowment within Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative that can invest capital to generate returns for future treatments. However, currently, the endowment is dramatically underfunded. Without increased funding from state and federal sources for projects and the endowment, Utah’s forests will remain untreated, leaving residents and public health at risk of future wildfire catastrophes.

To protect Utah’s natural resources and residents, we urge state lawmakers to take immediate action by increasing funding for landscape-scale forest management and planning through Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative and Shared Stewardship through Forestry, Fire, and State Lands. We have the partnerships, tools and science to create resilient, fire-adaptive landscapes, but we need commitment and increased funding from state legislatures to make this a reality.

Thanks to forest health treatments, Utahns saved tens of millions of dollars in potential wildfire damage and restoration costs from the Yellow Lake and South Willow Fires alone. The avoided costs make it clear: These investments work. With continued investments, similar protections can be extended to watersheds statewide, safeguarding our forests, watersheds and communities. Now is the time to act.

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