SACRAMENTO – The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety (Energy Safety) today issued its Annual Report on Compliance (ARC) for PacifiCorp’s 2023 Wildfire Mitigation Plan (WMP).
Energy Safety evaluated the 2023 WMP initiatives of PacifiCorp’s approved 2023-2025 Base WMP and found that PacifiCorp completed 34 of 44 or 77 percent of its 2023 initiative activities and objectives, including seven of the 10 initiatives with the largest planned expenditure. However, PacifiCorp failed to meet 10 of its 2023 WMP initiative targets, with planned work partially impacted by the Head Fire and Smith River Complex Fire in August of 2023. Both fires were ignited by lightning,
While it was moderately successful in executing its plan for wildfire risk mitigation, there are still areas of improvement and continued learning. Energy Safety expects PacifiCorp to adjust its planning accordingly, since fires in its territory impacted the company’s ability to complete its 2023 WMP targets and this kind of fire activity is not unforeseeable.
Energy Safety will continue to monitor PacifiCorp’s implementation of its ongoing wildfire mitigation activities and push the company to improve its ability to ultimately eliminate utility-caused catastrophic wildfires in California.