Good News on Federal "Old-Growth Rule"

As the 2025 Montana State Legislature kicks off, the Montana Electric Cooperatives Association (MECA) is joining investor-owned NorthWestern Energy and Montana-Dakota Utilities (MDU) Resources in supporting a bill to protect public utilities from wildfire liability. The wildfire liability legislation is shaping up to be one of the top priorities for member-owned cooperatives like Flathead Electric.
As wildfire risks continue to grow across the West, wildfire liability lawsuits put public utility members and ratepayers at increased risk. Many small cooperatives could not survive a multi-million-dollar payout. The commonsense legislation would shield utilities from liability if they had implemented and followed a wildfire mitigation plan. Additionally, the utility must follow “best industry practices” in its rights-of-way wildfire mitigation efforts.
“Flathead Electric has thousands of miles of power lines in areas prone to wildfire,” said CEO and General Manager Mark Johnson. “We have a Wildfire Mitigation Plan in place and follow a robust Vegetation Management Plan to minimize our electric distribution system’s risk of causing a wildfire ignition. This legislation gives us certainty going forward that we can serve our members and not be held responsible for events outside our control, including those occurring outside of our rights-of-way.”
Montana cooperatives recently received good news when the U.S. Forest Service dropped its draft proposal for managing old-growth forests. The proposal resulted from a 2022 executive order directing the Forest Service to draft a stricter policy on protecting old-growth forests.
In late 2024, Flathead Electric joined the Northwest Public Power Association (NWPPA) and multiple other consumer-owned utilities across the Pacific Northwest in opposing the proposal. Public power advocates pointed out that the rule would hamper utilities’ abilities to manage rights-of-way on federal forest land and violate existing federal law. The Montana and Idaho congressional delegations also opposed the rule.
“It is vital that utilities be able to manage rights-of-way on federal land to reduce wildfire and outage risks,” said Flathead Electric Co-operative’s Integrated Services Manager Amanda Opp. “We are glad that the proposed old-growth rule has been dropped. This is ultimately about keeping our community safe and our public lands better protected from wildfire.”
To keep up with the Montana Legislature’s 69th session from a utility perspective, sign up for Grassroots updates at https://www.flatheadelectric.com/grassroots-action-team.