The bipartisan wildfire bill is ready. Oregon’s US senators should help pass it.

Federal law allows utilities operating on national forest land to remove hazardous trees only within 10 feet of a power line. In Western forests, where trees routinely reach 100 feet tall and a single ignition can drive hundreds of thousands of acres of destruction, 10 feet is not a safety standard — it is a disaster waiting to happen.

The Fix Our Forests Act would extend that authority to 150 feet, alongside streamlined federal permitting for wildfire mitigation work and tighter judicial review timelines on fuel-reduction projects long delayed by litigation.

The bill has cleared the House by a 279-141 vote. It has also passed the Senate Agriculture Committee by a vote of 18 to 5, with Democratic support from senators in California, Minnesota, and Colorado. Four Western governors of both parties — California’s Gavin Newsom (D), Montana’s Greg Gianforte (R), Colorado’s Jared Polis (D) and Utah’s Spencer Cox (R) — have endorsed it. Utility operators across the West are calling for it.

But it does not have the support of Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

These two senators have instead backed the Wildfire and Grid Reliability Act, a $15 billion-per-year matching grant program funding utility infrastructure investments: undergrounding lines, hardening poles, vegetation management within existing rights-of-way.

Don’t get me wrong: Those investments have genuine value. But they address only what utilities can do on their own lines and existing rights-of-way. They don’t touch the federal-land bottleneck —........

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