Wildfire Mitigation

BPA’s Wildfire Mitigation Plan covers end-to-end activities related to the mitigation of wildfires across the Federal Columbia River Transmission System.
Wildfire substation

Public Meetings

BPA takes a proactive stance when it comes to the management of its transmission assets, and we have a legacy of high reliability to show for it. Following catastrophic fires in the West in 2018, BPA reexamined at its own equipment and practices. We took immediate steps to reduce BPA’s risk by reevaluating the criteria we use to determine the priority of repairing or replacing transmission components. As a result, BPA crews have replaced hundreds of transmission components that based on other criteria might not have been replaced so quickly.

BPA has adopted the Institute of Asset Management’s methodologies as its benchmark for asset management. And, making asset management an element of BPA’s strategic plan enhances our ability to develop solutions that focus on asset life-cycle management which, in turn, improves risk reducing methodologies in reliability, resiliency and wildfire mitigation.

The scope of the BPA’s wildfire mitigation plan (WMP) includes vegetation management (VM) programs and asset management programs across the entire transmission system lifecycle, including

  • Operations and maintenance
  • Replacement.
  • Disposal.
  • Response and recovery.

Additionally, the plan covers protocols and processes for restoring service after a wildfire. 

Wildfire Resources