A Lesson from the Maui Wildfires

I n 2021, President Biden signed into law a massive $1 trillion infrastructure bill, boasting that it was “the largest investment in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history.” More than $50 billion was earmarked to protect against droughts, heat, floods, and wildfires.

But the recent wildfires in Hawaii — the deadliest in American history, with more than 1,000 people still unaccounted for — should throw into sharp focus just what the bill does and doesn’t do. Yes, lots of money is being poured into semiconductor plants and trendy “clean energy” projects, along with the replacement of some ageing infrastructure.

But the Biden plan has a serious flaw that’s common throughout government infrastructure projects. Attention and money are lavished on shiny new objects that politicians can cut ribbons for. At the same time, little is done to improve maintenance, which plays a role in tragedy after tragedy, including the wildfires in Maui. Instead, thousands of new wind, solar, and battery-manufacturing projects are waiting for permission to connect to electric grids.

“Despite massive spending, there is nothing in the [Biden] plan to ensure infrastructure maintenance will not be deferred in the future,” Richard Geddes, director of Cornell University’s Program in Infrastructure Policy, wrote in the Hill in 2021.“Infrastructure maintenance is, sadly, one of the easiest things for governments to defer. It has virtually no direct political consequences and its effects are not felt for years, or perhaps decades.”

Deferred maintenance is defined as the upkeep and needed repairs that bring existing assets to a minimum acceptable physical condition. By that standard, the U.S. is in a hole so deep, we can’t see the sky. A 2019 Volcker Alliance report found that proper repairs to the United States’ ageing infrastructure could cost more than $1 trillion, or 5 percent of the country’s GDP.

The rush to expand green energy that is at the heart of much of President Biden’s economic program may actually be delaying proper maintenance in some areas. In Maui, the number of acres burned on the island soared to 39,000 in 2019, from 150 in 1999. A big cause was obvious: About one-fourth of Maui is state land that is increasingly covered by invasive — and highly flammable — grasses and shrubs.

After the devastating 2019 wildfire season, the Hawaiian Electric utility commissioned a report, which concluded that the utility should do far more to prevent its power lines from setting invasive grasses on fire. But since then, less than $245,000 has been spent on wildfire-prevention projects.

The Daily Wire reports that “the focus on Hawaii’s energy priorities over the past decade has been dominated by its push for green energy. The state enacted a first-in-the-country law in 2015 mandating that Hawaii’s grid be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2045.” The state even offered Hawaiian Electric large bonuses for finishing green-energy projects on time, and it levied fines on the utility if it missed deadlines.

Many of Hawaii’s political leaders are now trying to blame the Maui wildfires on climate change to divert attention from their own responsibility. Chief among them is Democratic governor Josh Green, who ran for the office in 2022, touting his leadership on the energy-mandate issue when he was majority leader of the state senate: “I sponsored Hawaii’s first renewable portfolio standards that mandated a substantial portion of Hawaii’s future energy production come from renewable energy sources,” he wrote in the Star Advertiser in 2022.

The dramatic shift to alternative energy that Green and others mandated had consequences. “You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within Hawaiian Electric that was occurring throughout the system,” the former chairwoman of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, told the Wall Street Journal. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”

Even when Hawaiian Electric finally focused on the potential wildfire problem, it dawdled. Last year, the utility submitted a plan to the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission proposing to spend $190 million on projects on Maui, including the removal of trees and brush from areas around power lines and shoring up the island’s ageing electrical infrastructure.

“The risk of a utility system causing a wildfire ignition is significant,” the company’s application stated. The commission finally approved the plan, but then Hawaiian Electric delayed implementing it until it received approval to pay for the project by increasing rates on customers. That approval still has not been given.

It’s fair to say that maintaining or improving existing infrastructure isn’t sexy or politically compelling. As HBO’s John Oliver explained a few years ago in a hilarious mock-documentary on infrastructure: “Building a LEGO set is fun. So is destroying one. But no one will ever make money selling a LEGO Infrastructure Kit.”

But events like the Maui wildfires should spur our interest in making future disasters less likely.

Current accounting practices do not require governments to recognize deferred-maintenance obligations as liabilities on their balance sheets. Only five states require disclosing deferred-maintenance obligations in their financial reports. For good reason, we no longer allow unfunded-public-pension obligations to be concealed. We should treat deferred-maintenance obligations the same way.

Cornell’s Geddes says that when a project is built or rebuilt, it should come with a 10- to 20-year contract with private partners guaranteeing a particular maintenance schedule. Most other countries follow that approach. Indeed, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey did exactly that in its acclaimed renovation of LaGuardia Airport and the building of the new Goethals Bridge to Staten Island: Its contracts include a long-term-maintenance agreement.

Our elected officials will never be cured of their addiction to cutting ribbons for new projects. But we can still insist that they pass concrete reforms that would help us escape the “build, neglect, rebuild” model we are currently trapped in.