Oregon Public Broadcasting

This year, taxpayers will spend an estimated one billion dollars to protect homes from wildfires.  A new report out Tuesday says the worst is yet to come.  Unless policy makers and home builders decide to change the pattern of development.  Correspondent Elizabeth Wynne Johnson reports.

Lightning and wind may be beyond human control.  But building in the likely path of wildfires isn’t.  That’s the message behind a study by environmental research group Headwaters Economics.

The study added up all the private land bordering on public forest land in 11 western states.  It found only a small percentage has homes and cabins on it.  Getting rural counties to restrict further building on the rest of it may be an uphill battle.  But that’s exactly what Headwaters’ Montana-based executive director Ray Rasker hopes to do.

Ray Rasker: "We’re allowing the permitting of homes next to the forest boundary without really understanding the true costs – both to firefighters, to taxes, and also in terms of how it ties up agencies’ budgets so they can’t do other things."

The report predicts that if just half of the available land alongside public forests were developed, annual firefighting costs could quadruple.

On the web:

headwaterseconomics.org/wildfire