By Ray Rasker, Headwaters Economics— …Wildland firefighting costs federal agencies more than $3 billion per year, more than twice the cost from a decade ago. Our research shows that the cost to U.S. taxpayers of protecting privately owned properties in the WUI are as high as $1 billion each year.
This may be just the beginning. Across the West, only 14 percent of the WUI [Wildland-Urban Interface] currently is in residential use — leaving 86 percent of private land available for future development.
Today, the federal government and national taxpayers pay most firefighting costs in the West. These expenses will continue to escalate unless there is a financial disincentive to building homes on fire-prone lands, so that more of the costs are carried by private landowners and local governments.
Most studies of wildland fire and residential development have focused on solutions such as fuel reduction and fire-safe home building. This approach may work for existing structures, but it fails to address the rapidly rising cost of new development and could even unintentionally increase WUI building and subsequent fire suppression costs.…