The Central Montana Railroad sued NorthWestern in 2023, attempting to recover costs for destroyed machinery and infrastructure burned by the fire.

The Denton fire wasn’t mentioned during the first half of the Energy and Telecommunication Interim Committee, which concerned wildfire liability. NorthWestern didn’t attend, legislators were told the utility’s lobbyist was home sick. The state’s other large monopoly, Montana Dakota Utilities, said that it’s having wildfire discussions at its “highest levels,” prompted by legislation and lawsuits targeting utilities in other states.

“I would dare say that if we need legislation, we would prefer to have the Legislature act on that instead of a jury,” said attorney Amy Grmoljez, speaking for MDU.

The wildfires caused by utilities are a national issue, said Mark Lambrecht, of Montana Rural Electric Cooperatives. Lambrecht said a cooperative in southern Montana faces legal challenges from an earlier fire season.

He didn’t say which co-op. Lambrecht said his members are also working with Montana’s congressional delegation on co-op liability for fires on U.S. Forest Service land.

Currently, if a utility has an updated wildfire mitigation plan approved by the federal government, there’s a $500,000 liability limit for fire on federal land, Lambrecht said. The fire liability increases to $1 million if mitigation plans aren’t updated. But the limits expire in 2028. The cooperatives are trying to make them permanent.

“If there’s damage in excess of $100,000, the issue goes away from the land management agency and directly over to the Department of Justice” currently, Lambrecht told legislators. “So, we’re taking a look at increasing that amount because it doesn’t take much to get to $100,000 these days, with attorneys involved and all of the other aspects of an issue on a federal level.”

In 2021, NorthWestern offered a two-hour long briefing on wildfire planning to the Montana Public Service Commission. With at least nine employees participating, the utility with 400,000 metered electricity customers in Montana, said that a combined 1,694 miles of distribution and transmission lines in Montana were considered above the company’s threshold of acceptable risk. The utility was cutting through an $18.7 million hazard tree program for 1,027 miles of power line.

Power lines running through forested areas accounted for most of the risk areas.

Legislators expressed concern that in other states, namely California and Oregon, utilities were expected to shut off electricity to prevent wildfire in high-risk conditions.

“Seems to me that if someone’s house burned down because their pumps were shut off, or somebody died because they had a medically necessary apparatus that was powered, and their battery backup ran out, or didn’t work, you’re going to court,” said Sen. Brad Molnar, a Laurel Republican and former Public Service Commissioner. “The Montana Constitution says that all cases in controversy shall go to court. How do we write something tight enough. . . that the insurance companies confident that whether the electricity was turned off, or not turned off, that they’re not going to court, that they’re not going to lose a huge number of millions of dollars because of a three-day range fire?”

Lambrecht said it was too early in discussions about shutoff protocols in Montana to answer questions about insurance.

Chris Pope, a Democratic Senator from Bozeman, recalled that at an earlier meeting NorthWestern characterized wildfire policy as a high priority. Pope said the committee was going to have to take the lead on writing wildfire policy concerning utilities before the 2025 Legislature convenes in January. The committee has two planned meetings remaining this year, in July and October.