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Wildfire plans and tree clearing in Montana: House Bill 490 and NorthWestern Energy's plan

What Montana's 2025 wildfire mitigation law (House Bill 490) requires in an electric facilities provider's plan, who approves it, and how NorthWestern Energy's 2025 plan describes its vegetation assessments and its hazard tree program.

Checked against the sources at the bottom of this page on October 10, 2026. Rules, fees and pay change: the source has the last word.

This page reports what the official source says. It is not legal advice: ask the office named here. It restates three documents as read on October 10, 2026: the enrolled text of House Bill 490 of the 69th Montana Legislature (2025) as published by the Legislature, NorthWestern Energy's Wildfire Safety and Wildfire Mitigation Plan pages, and NorthWestern Energy's Wildfire Mitigation Plan dated August 2025. The side by side with other regions is on the guide to utility wildfire plans and tree clearing.

What House Bill 490 requires

The act is titled "An act generally revising laws relating to wildfires and utilities". It says its sections 1 through 3 are to be codified as a new part in Title 69, chapter 2 of the Montana Code, and that it is effective on passage and approval. It applies to an electric facilities provider, a term it defines to include regulated utilities, electric cooperatives, municipally owned utilities, other entities owning electric facilities in the state and transmitting utilities under federal jurisdiction.

Section 2 says each provider shall prepare a wildfire mitigation plan, submit it to its approval authority and start implementing it no later than December 31, 2025, and resubmit an updated plan at least every three years. The plan must describe:

  • Areas that may face a heightened wildfire risk.
  • Strategies and programs to inspect, maintain, repair and operate electric facilities.
  • Strategies and programs to perform vegetation management.
  • Modifications, upgrades and preventative programs.
  • Methods for de-energizing power lines, with the access, community supply and public safety factors the act lists, and for restoring the system afterwards.
  • Estimated incremental costs for a regulated utility, community outreach, and any participation in state or local wildland fire protection plans.

The approval authority is the Public Service Commission for a regulated utility, the board of trustees for a cooperative and the city council or commission for a municipal utility. It takes public comment for up to 45 days and, after a public meeting and no more than 60 days after comment closes, approves the plan or identifies deficiencies. The Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and Montana Disaster and Emergency Services review plans submitted to the Commission and comment within the comment period. The act says the authority approves a plan that contains the required components, is in the public interest and reasonably balances the incremental costs against the risk of a wildfire. Each provider files an annual report by June 1, and the Commission may make rules for review and comment on a regulated utility's plan.

Section 3 sets the liability terms. It says strict liability may not be applied to a provider for wildfire-related damages. It sets a rebuttable presumption that a provider acted reasonably if, at the place of ignition, it substantially followed an approved plan. It limits noneconomic damages to cases of bodily injury or death, allows punitive damages only on clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence or intent, and sets a three year period to bring an action from the date the plaintiff first incurred injury or damages.

NorthWestern Energy's plan

NorthWestern Energy's plan describes vegetation work in its section 6. It says it plans to keep a yearly helicopter assessment of 100% of Montana's overhead transmission system and to expand aerial assessment, manned or unmanned, to the overhead distribution system. It adds an arborist-led vegetation ground assessment of the transmission system on a four-year cycle. It describes a Hazard Tree Program, approved by the Montana Public Service Commission in its 2018 electric rate case, aimed at trees killed by mountain pine beetle that could fall into lines, and says more than 1,200 miles of impacted forest have been cleared since the program began. It also says that where trees are planted under lines it may offer landowners a replacement tree whose full height will not reach the lines, and that tall forest trees well outside the right-of-way can contact lines in a windstorm.

Its web pages list the plan's strategies as pole replacement, undergrounding, grid hardening, weather monitoring and fire detection, risk tree removal, vegetation management within established rights-of-way, public safety power shutoffs, advanced technology, inspections and repairs, and community support. The pages say work practices such as tool choice, vehicle access routes and proactive work may be adjusted when wildfire risk is high.

Sources