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Meanwhile, fire season has begun.
There is basically no original way left to complain about Congress. Bemoaning our elected officials is the most American of pastimes; pretty much as long as we’ve been a country, we’ve been cringing at the people who run it.
Lately, though, things have felt bleakly unfunny. Gerrymandering and tribalism have cleaved Congress into warring halves, making bipartisanship politically suicidal. The three-week House Speaker vacancy last fall exposed the legislative branch as the most dysfunctional it’s been in its quarter-millennium of existence. Lawmakers accomplished less in 2023 than any other time in the past 50 years, and experts predict 2024 will be even worse.
It’s a bad time to be someone who needs a bill passed, in other words. Like, say, a federal wildland firefighter.
Back in 2022, in the flush times after the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, President Biden allotted $600 million toward increasing the pay of federal firefighters, who made as little as $13 an hour at the time. The BIL boost was not insignificant: it bumped the starting wage to $15 an hour, and current firefighters received an annual pay increase of up to $20,000 that was retroactive to the year before.
The raise had always been intended to be temporary, serving as a “bridge for two years as the administration works with Congress on longer-term reforms,” the Biden administration explained at the time. That ran out last September — just in time for the government to implode spectacularly.
Congress had actually been working on a permanent fix last summer, the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act. A rare bipartisan piece of legislation, it was introduced by Arizona’s Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema and would mean a lasting increase to the base pay for Forest Service and Department of the Interior wildland firefighters, plus add new premium pay for those who respond to high-hazard fire incidents.
The bill cruised through the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on a 10-1 vote, with only Republican Rand Paul concern-trolling about the deficit. But it never even made it to committee in a Republican-controlled House obsessed with spending cuts. “There was a window where it could have been brought up for a vote that they pretty much missed,” Riva Duncan, a wildland firefighter of more than 30 years who serves as the executive secretary of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an industry advocacy group, told me.
Since the temporary pay bump expired in September, Congress has extended firefighters’ salaries three times using continuing resolutions, which means that every few months, there are headlines about how the force is on the brink of losing half their pay. The current supplement — and funding for the government more broadly — is set to expire March 8, and Congress will probably bridge it with a fourth extension as the bill continues to flounder and the larger budget fights continue.
Meanwhile, the 2024 fire season is already starting to heat up. Several states were under red flag warnings on Monday and Tuesday, with smoke from wildfires in the Great Plains and south drifting as far as New York City. And it’s February. Things will only get worse as the spring dries into the summer.
For the 17,000 or so firefighters affected, the uncertainty means their lives hang in a sort of limbo. Retirement accounts are suspended until Congress can work out a solution. Additionally, “a lot of people who have tried to get a loan, whether it’s for a vehicle or to buy a house or to move and pay rent — they can’t count on the supplement,” Duncan said. “So that really affects them, not having a plannable income.”
Needless to say, “morale is pretty low right now,” Duncan went on. It’s not an appealing time to be a federal firefighter, particularly when many state and private firefighting agencies can offer you actual financial stability (not to mention wages that are often higher). According to an assessment by the National Federation of Federal Employees, as much as half of the 11,000-strong Forest Service firefighters corps could start to look for other work if a permanent fix doesn’t happen soon. And if that comes to be, then “communities will burn, and people will die,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin warned in a statement last summer.
That’s because federal firefighters do things that other crews, simply, can’t. “The federal government … provides advanced-skill units not offered by state or private entities, such as hotshot crews, smokejumpers, rappellers, helitack crews, and wildland fire modules” — that is, specialist teams that are critical for fighting fires in this new era of extreme weather — Colorado’s Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse, the co-chair of the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus, wrote in a letter last fall.
Retirements and defections from skill-based work like firefighting are especially damaging because with every senior departure goes the kind of on-the-job expertise that green new hires can’t replace. But that’s if there are new hires in the first place. Rumors abound that the agencies are struggling to fill their openings even this late in the training cycle, with a known vacancy rate of 20% in the Forest Service force alone.
To help its remaining workers make ends meet, the Forest Service has been paying firefighter wages out of its fire suppression fund, which is usually used on actual fires. In the DOI, the stopgap money comes from its preparedness fund, which is intended for day-to-day expenses. That has been working in the short term. But “if we have a big fire season, which in an El Niño year, usually we do — we know that there’s a lot less snow in the Rockies and the Sierra this year — then that pot of money for suppression, it’s not bottomless. It is a finite pot of money,” Duncan said. Agencies and lawmakers think, “‘Well, they’re making it work, so they don’t really need a permanent pay raise,’” she added. “But this is not a tenable situation.”
Each year, an average of 17 wildland firefighters die in the line of duty. Climate change doubled the number of large fires in the West between 1984 and 2015. And last year saw the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history in a place that wasn’t supposed to burn.
Firefighter pay, by all appearances, should be the rare issue on the Hill that lawmakers more or less agree on. No one wants to see communities burned to the ground, cities filled with smoke, or the people who risk their lives to contain such dramatic natural disasters go underpaid. The bill is about as close to a no-brainer as you can get in these divisive times, and Duncan feels sure that if it went to a vote, it would pass. But Congress remains distracted and obstinate. As long as the permanent bill is stalled and continuing resolutions are used as short-term fixes, federal firefighters will continue to feel undervalued or, worse, forgotten.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”
Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.
What are you referencing when you say, ‘the wind industry’s strategy is failing’?
Anyone in the climate space, in the clean energy space, the worst thing you can do is go silent and pretend that this is just going to go away. Even if it’s the president and the administration delivering the attacks, I think there’s an important strategy that’s been lacking in the wind and other sectors that I don’t think has been effective. There was a recent E&E News story that noted a couple of wind developers when asked for comment just say, “No comment.” This to me misses a really big opportunity to not get in a fight with people but talk about the benefits of wind.
Not taking advantage of milestones like ground breaking or construction starting is a missed opportunity to drive public opinion. If you lose support in public opinion, you’re going to lose support from public officials, because they largely follow public opinion.
And there’s no way that’s going to change if you don’t take the opportunities to talk about the benefits that wind can provide, in terms of good-paying local jobs or supplying more electrons to the grid. By almost any measure the strategy employed so far has not really worked.
Okay, but what is the wind industry strategy that isn’t working? What are they doing to rebut attacks on the technology, on property values, on the environment?
We’re not hearing them. We’re not hearing those arguments.
You can’t let criticisms go unanswered.It would better serve the industry and these companies to push back against criticisms. It’s not like you can’t anticipate what they are. And what do you have to lose? You’re in the worst position of any energy sector in this political moment. It would be nice to see some fight and sharp campaign skills and strategic effort in terms of communication. And there’s no strategic value from what I can tell in [being silent].
I understand not wanting to pick a fight with folks who hold your fate in their hands, but there’s a way to thread a needle that isn’t antagonizing anybody but also making sure the facts have been heard. And that’s been missing.
You’d specifically said the industry should stop ‘being paralyzed in fear and start going on offense.’ What does that look like to you?
Taking every opportunity to get your message out there. The lowest hanging fruit is when a reporter comes and asks you, What do you think about this criticism? You should definitely reply. It’s lifting up third-party voices that are benefiting from a specific project, talking about the economic impacts more broadly, talking about the benefits to the grid.
There’s a whole number of tools in the toolbox to put to use but the toolboxes remain shut thus far. Targeted paid media, elevating the different voices and communities that are going to resonate with different legislators, and certainly the facts are helpful. Also having materials prepared, like validators and frequently asked questions and answers.
You’re trying to win. You’re trying to get your project to be successful and deliver jobs and tax revenue. And I think it would be wise for companies to look at the playbooks of electoral campaigns, because there’s lots of tools that campaigns use.
How do renewable energy developers get around the problem of partisanship? How do you get outta that through a campaign approach?
These projects are decided locally. It’s deciding who the decision-makers are and not just letting opponents who are getting talking points through right-wing media show up and reiterate these talking points. Oftentimes, there’s no one on the pro side even showing up at all, and it makes it really easy for city councils to oppose projects. They’re losing by forfeit. We can’t keep doing that.
And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.
2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.
3. Bedford County, Pennsylvania – Arena Renewables is trying to thread a needle through development in one of the riskiest Pennsylvania counties for development, with an agriculture-fueled opposition risk score of 89.
4. Knox County, Ohio – The Ohio Power Siting Board has given the green light to Open Road Renewables’ much-watched Frasier Solar project.
5. Clay County, Missouri – We’ll find out next week if rural Missouri can still take it easy on a large solar project.
6. Clark County, Nevada – President Trump’s Bureau of Land Management has pushed back the permitting process for EDF Renewables’ Bonanza solar project by at least two months and possibly longer .
7. Klickitat County, Washington – Washington State has now formally overridden local opposition to Cypress Creek’s Carriger solar project after teeing up the decision in May.
It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.
I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.
At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.
One can guess why investors thought this rural Wyoming expanse would be an easier place to build: it’s an energy community situated in the middle of the Powder River Basin and the state’s Republican governor Mark Gordon has supported wind projects in the state publicly, not just with rhetoric but votes in favor of them on the State Board of Land Commissioners.
Wind is also often proposed on private land in Wyoming, which is supposed to make things easier. You may remember the Lucky Star and Twin Rivers wind farms, a pair of projects whose progress I’ve watched like a hawk because they’re tied to the future of wind permitting at the national level. As we first reported, the Trump administration is proceeding with potentially approving the transmission line for Lucky Star, a project that would be sited entirely on private land, and Twin Rivers received its final environmental review in the last days of the Biden administration, making it difficult for anti-wind advocates to curtail.
Unlike those projects, Pronghorn has created a fork in the road for wind in Wyoming. It’s because the people in its host community don’t seem to want it, the wind projects were on state land, and there’s politics at play.
Despite being considered an energy community, Converse and Niobrara are both areas with especially high opposition risk, according to Heatmap Pro, largely due to its low support for renewable energy, its demographics, and concerns about impacts to the local ranching economy. After Gordon and other members of the state land use board approved two wind facilities for the hydrogen project, a rancher living nearby sued the board with public support from the mayor of Glenrock and the area’s legislators in the statehouse. A member of the Converse County zoning board even published a “manifesto” against the project, detailing local concerns that are myriad and rooted in fears of overburden, ranging from water use and property value woes to a general resentment toward an overall rise in wind turbines across the county and state.
What’s probably most concerning to wind supporters is that this local fight is bubbling up into a statewide political fracture between Gordon and his secretary of state Chuck Gray, who is believed to be a future candidate for governor. Grey was the lone dissenting vote against the two wind projects for Pronghorn, saying he did not support the projects because they would be assisted by federal tax credits Trump is trying to gut. Gray then took to mocking the governor on social media for his stance on wind while posting photos of broken wind turbines. Gordon wound up responding to his secretary of state accusing him of being the “only member of the state land board to vote against individual property rights and Wyoming schools.”
“That is his prerogative to be sure, but it demonstrates his disregard for the duties of his office and a determination to impose his personal preferences on others, no matter the cost,” Gordon stated.
I’ve been reaching out to Pronghorn and its founder Paul Martin to try and chat about what’s happening in Wyoming. I haven’t heard back, and if I do I’ll gladly follow this story up, but there’s a sign here of an issue in Wyoming whether Pronghorn gets built or not – areas of Wyoming may be on the verge of a breaking point on wind energy.
I heard about the Pronghorn project in conversations this week with folks who work on wind permitting issues in Wyoming and learned that the Gordon-Gray feud is emblematic of how the wind industry’s growth in the state is making local officials more wary of greenlighting projects. Whether Gordon’s position on private property wins out over Gray taking up the mantle of the anti-wind conservative critic may be the touchstone for the future of local planning decisions, too.
At least, that’s the sense I got talking to Sue Jones, a commissioner in Carbon County, directly southwest of Converse County. Jones admits she personally doesn’t care for wind farms and that it’s “no secret with the county, or the developers.” But so far, she hasn’t voted that way as a commissioner.
“If they meet all our rules and regs, then I’ve voted to give them a permit,” she told me. “You can’t just say no to anything. It’s a good thing that we value private property rights.”
Jones said the problem in Carbon County and other areas of Wyoming is “saturation level.” Areas of the state where only a handful of landowners hold thousands of acres? That’s probably fine for wind projects because there’s a low likelihood of a neighbor or two having a genuine grievance. But as wind has grown into population-denser areas of the state the dissent is becoming more frequent.
My gut feeling is that, as we’ve seen in many other instances, this resentment will bubble up and manifest as sweeping reform – unless the wind industry is able to properly address these growing concerns head on.