Money, Money Part 3 (let’s talk billions) + Equity
Confluence West is a consortium of preeminent western water leaders.
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Friends –
Let’s talk money (again).
We all know that western wildfire suppression costs are … well, astronomical – as of October 21, 2020, $3.7 billion for the 2020 fires. (No numbers available for Arizona and Wyoming.)
We know that what it takes to put out a wildfire is only a fraction of the actual costs.
I hope these numbers (and the reports we’ve complied) give you more useful talking points for protecting our forests, health, water, economy, and food - and for supporting the low-income communities taking the brunt of the wildfire impacts.
I took an unscientific dive (no journal publication here) into how these costs stack up against what it takes to get forests a lot healthier.
To start with, few jaw-dropping numbers (details on our report page):
The 2000 Cerro Grande Fire (47,000 acres) in New Mexico ended up having a total estimated cost of $906 million, of which suppression costs accounted for only three-percent. (The GAO calculated $1B.)
The 2013 Rim Fire (105,000 acres) in California caused $1.8 billion in environmental and property damage.
These costs don’t include, for example, the impacts on human health, greenhouse gas emissions, reduction in crop production, or the destruction of water supply infrastructure. And, these are small wildfires by 2020 standards.
Did you know that an estimated 7.4 million children in the United States are affected by wildfire smoke annually, many of them in the American West? One in six children in California’s San Joaquin Valley has asthma.
If we had $3.7 billion (or even half of that) to invest in the health of our headwaters forests – the source of 60% of water in the American West - what would we get? There’s a wide range of cost-per-acre estimates: $500 for prescribed burns; $1,200 to $5,000 for thinning; to $14,000 (that last is for pulling dead/dog hair trees out by helicopter.)
Using $3,000 per acre (back of the envelope average), $3.7 billion would get us about 1.3 million acres restored in one year. There are about 2.2 million acres in just Oregon and Washington that need restoration, about one-million acres scheduled in California over a five-year period. (If you add up all the forests that need investment in the West … well, your head starts to hurt.)
We’re seeing many hopeful conversations (e.g., indigenous wisdom burns “good fire”) and smart actions by many water agencies. Keep it going!
We’ve curated a couple of useful reports, and you can also find the “Investing in Healthy Headwaters” webinar recording on the same page.
