News

…It didn’t take long to find an excellent recent analysis of firefighting costs, and of the factors driving them: a warming climate, forestlands made abnormally vulnerable through a century of fire suppression, and — especially— continuing expansion of residential development in the fire zone.

“The Rising Cost of Wildfire Protection,” published last June by Headwaters Economics of Bozeman, Mont., is the work of Ross Gorte, who does not lack for expert credentials or life experience. He holds a Ph.D. in forest economics, with a special focus on fire, and has worked for the U.S. Forest Service, the Congressional Research Service, the congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Forest Products Association…

(more…)

…A fraction of the drilling in the Bakken is taking place in Montana, which saw its last oil boom lose steam in 2006. Production on wells in Montana isn’t fully taxed for 18 months, leaving towns to wait two years for money to upgrade infrastructure. When taxes do kick in, the state receives 52 percent, with about 47 percent divided between counties and school districts. Cities get one-tenth of 1 percent.

Montana will collect $800,000 less from each new well compared to North Dakota, even as continuous drilling to increase productivity deepens the impact on cities and extends it over long periods, said Mark Haggerty, an economist with Bozeman, Montana-based Headwaters Economics…

(more…)

…An estimated 7 million people have been shut out at 12 of the busiest and biggest U.S. national parks, costing parks and nearby communities about $76 million in lost visitor spending for each day the partial government shutdown drags on.

That’s according to a report just out from the , which derived its estimates from actual National Park Service visitation numbers from last October and an independent analysis of park economic impacts conducted by the nonpartisan group Headwaters Economics…

(more…)

…Haggerty found that rural counties that get the Secure Rural Schools funding today will get 25 percent less money, based on the 2012 price of timber and the CBO numbers. Idaho’s 35 Secure Rural School counties would get $15 million less in 2023 under Hastings bill than under Secure Rural Schools, which Congress recently approved for another year…

(more…)

…The highest value of Idaho’s public land economically doesn’t come from mining, logging, ranching or tourism, economist Ray Rasker said.

Its primary value is as an magnet for companies and their most creative and educated employees, Rasker told the Boise City Club and Idaho Environmental Forum Thursday.

“It’s a way to attract talent,” Rasker said.

Rasker’s message was not lost on Idaho Commerce Secretary Jeff Sayer. He and his staff highlight the open space in its business recruitment efforts.…

(more…)

…Like real-life lottery winners, states use oil and gas tax revenue differently. Many use it for short-term purposes, enhancing general fund expenditures that would otherwise require public service cuts or higher taxes elsewhere in the economy. Some might have enough left over to pad their funds for a budgetary rainy day.

But when it comes to permanent, legacy-type savings, there’s often little or nothing to save. “It’s very difficult to put money aside in a political environment. And once there is, it’s hard to keep it there,” said Mark Haggerty, an economist with Headwaters Economics, of Bozeman, Mont., who has studied oil tax policy among the states…

(more…)

…A 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office said because the federal government shoulders the cost of much wildfire fighting, state and local governments have little incentive to put in place policies, like stricter building and zoning rules, that would help cut the costs of battling the flames.

“We need more responsibility at the local level,” said Ray Rasker. “Right now the firefighting costs are borne by the federal taxpayer. That’s the crux of the problem here. Until it affects somebody’s budget, we’re not going to see much change.”…

(more…)

…"With the housing market picking up again," said Ray Rasker, a wildfire expert at Headwaters Economics, a nonpartisan Montana-based think tank, "we’re going to see more people building in the fire zones, and the U.S. taxpayers are going to pay for it."…

(more…)

…The federal appropriations and Forest Service and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) for wildland firefighting has gone from about $1 billion a year on average during the 1990s, to now on average over $3 billion per year. So the cost has tripled. And we’re trying to determine what percentage of that cost is attributable to the building of homes on fire-prone lands.

The Forest Service estimates that anywhere from 50 to 95 percent of total firefighting costs are related to homes. Our estimates are more on the order of about 30 percent. Either way, it’s significant. If it’s 30 percent it would be about $1 billion a year…

(more…)

U.S. Senator Mark Udall wants to declare a new national monument in Colorado. The Democratic senator plans to introduce legislation later this summer that would protect Brown’s Canyon. The proposal includes 22,000 acres along the Arkansas River between Salida and Buena Vista. As Lesley McClurg reports, the idea is stirring controversy.

Related studies from Headwater Economics: the economic value of western public lands, a study on how public lands influence per capita income, and the economic value of national monuments.

(more…)

…Analysts say 16 percent of the West’s so-called wildland-urban interface is now developed, and already fire suppression consumes nearly half of the U.S. Forest Service budget. If that encroachment reaches 50 percent of the area where private lands border federal forests, economist Ray Rasker of non-profit research group Headwaters Economics said, the costs would climb to $6 billion — more than the current Forest Service budget…

(more…)

…There have also been an unusually large number of fires so far in California overall. From the first of the year through July 13, the entire state has experienced 3,719 fires that have burned across 63,701 acres, according to the latest data from the State of California.

That’s quite a few more fires than the five year average for that same time period, which totals 2,428. (Luckily, the total area burned so far is a bit less than the five-year average of 77,504.)

If my sense of geography is accurate, seven counties are visible in the satellite image up top, either in whole in or in part. And within those counties, data from Headwaters Economics, an independent, nonprofit research group, show that there are more than 155,000 homes in close proximity to fire-prone wildlands, meaning they are in the so-called wildland-urban interface, or WUI…

(more…)

…Rasker, who is the executive director of Headwaters Economics, noticed that when it’s unusually warm, things get worse. In Montana, when it’s just one degree warmer than average, 35 percent more land burns. That costs money.

“The really interesting thing is that when the average summertime temperature is just one degree Fahrenheit warmer, the cost of defending these homes doubles,” he says. Rasker says these numbers are similar in California and Oregon…

(more…)

…“If you think about the trajectory that we’re on right now, with more and more people wanting to live in the woods, with a warming climate, and a lot of fuel buildup from past management practices, it’s a tinderbox,” says Ray Rasker PhD, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based research firm specializing in land management issues of the western states. “The conversation needs to move on from suppression to preventing these fires from happening.”

The really alarming part, Rasker says, is that only 16 percent of the high fire risk land in the US currently has homes on it, meaning that the other 84 percent is still open for future development…

(more…)

…Insurance is based on risk, and your risk is reduced when the cost of defending the homes is paid for by somebody else," says Ray Rasker, executive director of the Montana-based think tank Headwaters Economics.

Rasker means taxpayers. Last year alone, the U.S. Forest Service budgeted roughly $1 billion for wildfires. The bulk of that money went to battle blazes that threatened homes and cities.

"It’s not until we start shifting that cost responsibility more to the local level, that we’re going to see a change in the pattern of where people build homes," Rasker says.…

(more…)

…Even in the wake of a tragedy like the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona, northwest of Phoenix, lessons about lessening risk “are not being learned,” said Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a research group in Bozeman, Mont.

About 16 percent of wildland-urban interface has been developed, he said. “But we’re not even having a national conversation about the other 84 percent.” He added that “the reason that local governments are not responding and not restricting development is that they don’t bear much of the cost” of fighting the fires and cleaning up afterward. “The bulk is borne by the federal taxpayer.”…

(more…)

…In other words, the counties getting the most could be those that need it the least, since they have larger tax bases, and this imbalance would only get worse should SRS disappear, according to Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based think tank.

The result is a shift toward PILT. Rural counties will lose the most and urban get more. It shifts $115 million away from rural counties," said Mark Haggerty, a Headwaters policy analyst…

(more…)

…A recent report by Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman-based nonprofit, found that Western rural counties with more than 30 percent of their land safeguarded as national parks, federal wilderness, or national forests collectively increased job creation by 345 percent over the past 40 years, a rate four times greater than rural counties with no federally protected lands, which increased employment by 83 percent…

(more…)

…The number of people living in fire-prone areas has grown dramatically — 250,000 Coloradans have moved to the “red zone” in the past two decades. And this is likely to grow in the years ahead: If you look at all the private land out West that sits near forest areas and is prone to wildfires, Gorte notes, only about 16 percent of it is developed. So there’s a lot of room for growth…

(more…)

…Like earthquakes in California or hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, wildfires are a perennial danger in the tinderbox West. But experts say the wildfires are getting bigger and more destructive, made worse by years of drought and fire suppression, a rise in temperatures from climate change and denser development into the wild.

The six worst wildfire seasons of the past 50 years have happened since 2000, according to a recent report by Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based research firm that often examines fires and their consequences…

(more…)