My name is Russ Sapp, and I have been a Board Member of Consumer’s Power, Inc. (CPI) for the past 30 years. I grew up in Alsea Valley, where my dad logged for my grandfather’s sawmill, and I became the third in five generations of a local logging family.

Bob Zybach and I probably first met as parents at an Alsea vs. Eddyville eight-man football game in the late 1970s or so. My family did logging and sawmilling, while his did prescribed burning and tree planting. 

Our long-time mutual friend, Wayne Giesy, formally introduced us when I was running for Benton County Commissioner and Bob was working on his wildfire PhD at OSU, sometime in the early 90s. A few years later they formed an educational nonprofit, Oregon Websites & Watersheds Project, Inc. (ORWW), and we have worked together on forestry research and education projects off-and-on ever since.

This opinion piece is being coauthored by the two of us because we share very strong concerns regarding the wildfires that have been taking place the past 30 years and the devastating effects they have had on rural Oregon towns and families, including our own. 

In recent years, several major wildfires have been attributed to power companies that have resulted in millions of burned acres, dozens of lost lives, thousands of burned homes, billions of dollars in legal fees and property damages, and hundreds of millions in fines. 

Were these fires the results of poor business management, needed electricity use by customers, and/or poor forest and shrubland maintenance on public lands? 

Blame keeps being assigned to railroads and electrical companies because they have the “deep pockets” and can be sued. The problem is fuel, though, and not the source of ignition. We didn’t have these problems in the 1960s, ’70s, or ’80s, so why now?

Thad Springer was a neighbor, a good logger, and a high climber. In the 1980s he impressed on me the importance of delivering safe, affordable and reliable power to our rural CPI members and communities. Whenever there was a windstorm or bug infestation, we would contact the USFS, BLM, or State and report windthrown, dying, or dead trees. 

Meanwhile, Bob and his crews were also cutting snags (“dead trees”) and danger trees in logging units before broadcast burning the fuels and planting with young seedlings. 

Then things began to change. 

About that time the political “environmental movement” and academic “forest ecologists” began claiming that “healthy forests” were those in which large snags and logs formed “critical habitat” for certain birds, bats, or fish. Lawsuits followed and proponents actually began girdling and topping trees to create even more snags! 

“Roadless rules” were installed, logging stopped, streamside buffers created, lawsuits continued, and within a few years all of these accumulating fuels began burning in catastrophic wildfires — as had been clearly and scientifically predicted. 

“Climate change” was given as the excuse, but it was our woods and towns that were burning up, and we could clearly see it was the neglected trees and snags that were much of the problem.

Man is the only animal that can start a fire, whether building a campfire, cooking a meal, careless smoking, driving a car, using electricity, or as an arsonist. 

How to fix? Burying power lines is very costly and is still subject to landslides and uprooted trees during windstorms. 

Right-of-ways have historically been as little as 20-feet wide through private properties and pruning and maintaining adjacent trees and limbs is also very costly, and difficult to keep up with new growth or windstorms.

 Shutting off power during windstorms or wildfires eliminates water pumps, medical equipment, and lighting for families who need them most during such emergencies.

The solution for dealing with these problems is simple — but might require some form of legal action or regulation: systematically log all trees within a tree-length of a powerline and replace with other income-producing vegetation that doesn’t reach the lines, such as Christmas trees, grapevines, community gardens, or pasture grass.

That approach would resolve a major problem, result in tax-producing jobs, and maybe customer savings in electricity costs. And certainly, the risk of catastrophic wildfires and major financial losses from powerline wildfires would be greatly reduced.