If your cooperative owns transmission or distribution facilities in a Texas wildfire risk area, you now have a filing obligation that did not exist a year ago. That is not a prediction. It is the law.
Two rules govern vegetation and wildfire compliance in Texas, but they are not aimed at the same utilities. Knowing which one actually applies to your cooperative is the first step to staying ahead of it.
Two Rules, Two Different Audiences
16 TAC § 25.96 has required electric utilities to maintain a written Vegetation Management Plan and file an annual report with the Public Utility Commission since 2013 (Public Utility Commission of Texas, “16 TAC § 25.96 Vegetation Management”). It is a real requirement, but it is written for investor-owned utilities. Cooperatives are generally outside its scope, with one exception: if your co-op provides power outside its designated service area, § 25.96 can apply to you as well (16 TAC § 25.96(a); Public Utility Regulatory Act § 11.004).
What Changed in 2025
In February 2024, the Smokehouse Creek Fire tore through the Texas Panhandle, killing three people and burning more than one million acres (Public Citizen, “Bills to Prevent Wildfires Sparked by Oil and Gas Field Power Lines Signed into Law”). A Texas House investigation pointed to a brittle oilfield utility pole that snapped and fell on dry grass, and found that neither the state’s oil and gas regulator nor the Public Utility Commission had clear authority to inspect the pole or hold its operator accountable (Public Citizen, “Bills to Prevent Wildfires Sparked by Oil and Gas Field Power Lines Signed into Law”).
The 89th Legislature responded with House Bills 143, 144, and 145, drafted as companion legislation in direct response to that disaster (Public Citizen, “Bills to Prevent Wildfires Sparked by Oil and Gas Field Power Lines Signed into Law”). House Bill 145 became effective September 1, 2025, and required electric utilities, municipally owned utilities, and electric cooperatives that own transmission or distribution facilities in a wildfire risk area to file a wildfire mitigation plan with the commission (H.B. 145, 89th Texas Legislature).
To implement HB 145, the PUC adopted new 16 TAC § 25.60 on November 14, 2025, effective December 4, 2025 (Public Utility Commission of Texas, “Adopted Rule 16 TAC § 25.60, Project No. 56789”).
What Actually Triggers the Requirement for Co-ops
This is the part that matters most for cooperatives, and it is worth being precise about. Section 25.60 does not apply to every co-op in the state automatically. It applies when the Texas Division of Emergency Management has designated an area where your cooperative owns transmission or distribution facilities as an elevated wildfire risk area (Public Utility Commission of Texas, “Adopted Rule 16 TAC § 25.60, Project No. 56789”). TDEM makes that determination using wildfire risk data from the Texas A&M Forest Service, including the TAMFS Risk Explorer (Public Utility Commission of Texas, “Adopted Rule 16 TAC § 25.60, Project No. 56789”).
In practice, that means your obligation to file a wildfire mitigation plan depends on where TDEM has drawn the line, not on your utility type. Cooperatives can also choose to designate additional risk areas beyond what TDEM identifies, if their own data supports it, but the baseline trigger is the TDEM designation (16 TAC § 25.60(b)).
Once an entity acknowledges it owns facilities in a TDEM-designated risk area, it must file an application for approval of a wildfire mitigation plan with the commission, and once approved, that plan has to be implemented and kept current (Public Utility Commission of Texas, “Adopted Rule 16 TAC § 25.60, Project No. 56789”). Approved plans need to be resubmitted for approval every three years, and annual updates are required in the meantime (Public Utility Commission of Texas, “Adopted Rule 16 TAC § 25.60, Project No. 56789”).
Several Texas cooperatives have already filed the acknowledgment that starts this process, confirming they own distribution facilities in TDEM-designated risk areas and accepting the obligation to file a plan (Public Utility Commission of Texas Interchange, Project No. 59402 filings).
For the full rule text and filing requirements, the Public Utility Commission has posted the adopted rule here.
What the Plans Have to Cover
A wildfire mitigation plan needs to include a description of each area the cooperative serves that falls inside a wildfire risk area, along with the inspection procedures, vegetation management strategies, and coordination protocols with emergency response entities for that territory (H.B. 145, 89th Texas Legislature). Annual updates go to the commission, and the commission can also request after-action or lessons-learned reports (Public Utility Commission of Texas, “Adopted Rule 16 TAC § 25.60, Project No. 56789”).
That last piece matters. A wildfire mitigation plan is not something you file once and revisit at the next rate case. It is a living record of how your program is performing against a documented risk area
Why This Is Hard Without the Right Data
The compliance challenge is not writing the plan. It is having the operational data to back it up.
Documenting vegetation management activities by location and timing requires more than work orders in a spreadsheet. You need to know what was trimmed, where, when, and by whom. You need to show coverage across your right-of-way in the specific areas TDEM has flagged, identify gaps, and demonstrate progress in the territory that actually drove the requirement.
Co-ops that have been running their vegetation programs without a spatial record-keeping system are going to find this harder than it needs to be. The data exists somewhere, in contractor invoices, crew notes, outage tickets, but pulling it together into something that satisfies a PUC review is a different problem entirely.
Bloom Spatial was built to solve exactly this. It gives your team a map-based view of vegetation management activity across your entire territory, tied to the circuits and assets that matter for reliability and now, wildfire mitigation. When the question is whether your vegetation work covers your TDEM-designated risk areas, Bloom Spatial gives you an answer, not a search project.
What Texas Co-ops Should Be Doing Now
First, find out where you stand. Check whether TDEM has designated any part of your service territory as a wildfire risk area. That determination is what starts the clock on your § 25.60 obligation.
Audit what you are already capturing. If your vegetation work is not being recorded with location data, you have a gap that will make a plan filing harder than it has to be.
Map your risk exposure against your own system. Wildfire risk designations are geographic, and your plan needs to reflect that same geography down to the circuits and assets in the affected areas.
Build the annual update habit now. Section 25.60 requires annual plan updates and reapproval every three years. Getting a clean, repeatable process in place before your first filing will save you from building it under deadline pressure later.
The Bigger Picture
Texas is not acting in isolation. California pioneered utility wildfire mitigation plan requirements following its catastrophic 2017 and 2018 fire seasons, and Oregon, Colorado, and other states have followed (Sharper Shape, “Texas Wildfire Regulation Reaches a Turning Point”). The pace of adoption is accelerating as climate data increasingly shows longer fire seasons, higher fuel loads, and greater geographic spread of wildfire risk (Sharper Shape, “Texas Wildfire Regulation Reaches a Turning Point”).
A Texas 2036 analysis of First Street Foundation data projects that nearly nine million properties, roughly 70% of all properties in Texas, face some wildfire risk over the next 30 years (Sharper Shape, “Texas Wildfire Regulation Reaches a Turning Point”, citing Texas 2036).
Co-ops that treat wildfire mitigation as a compliance checkbox are going to find themselves behind. The ones that treat it as an operational program, built on accurate location data and documented activity records tied to their actual designated risk areas, will be in a better position to meet these requirements and protect the members they serve.
If you want to see how Bloom Spatial supports wildfire mitigation planning for Texas co-ops, reach out to our team.
Leave a Reply