PacifiCorp, a utility owned by Berkshire Hathaway, agreed to pay $575 million to resolve U.S. government damages claims related to six wildfires in Oregon and California that burned nearly 290,000 acres of federal land, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday.<\/p>\n
The settlement resolves claims that PacifiCorp\u2019s electrical lines negligently started the fires.<\/p>\n
Related: Buffett Utility Reaches Oregon Wildfire Deal With Nearly 1,500 Victims<\/a><\/p>\n Five of the fires \u2013 Archie Creek, Echo Mountain Complex, Slater, South Obenchain and 242 \u2013 began during Labor Day weekend in 2020 and burned approximately 250,000 acres of federal land. The sixth fire, McKinney, began in July 2022 and burned 39,000 acres of federal land.<\/p>\n PacifiCorp\u2019s payment will help repay the government for firefighting costs, and allow the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to restore some of the burned land.<\/p>\n The settlement \u201censures fair compensation to the American taxpayer,\u201d and \u201cstrikes a balance by addressing the government\u2019s significant fire-suppression costs and loss of natural resources without preventing PacifiCorp from offering electricity at fair prices,\u201d Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson said in a statement.<\/p>\n Related: Utilities\u2019 Extreme Plan to Stop Wildfires: Shut Off the Power<\/a><\/p>\n PacifiCorp denied liability in agreeing to settle, the Justice Department said. The utility did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n The settlement was announced three days after PacifiCorp said it planned to sell many of its assets in Washington state to Portland General Electric POR.N for $1.9 billion, to bolster liquidity as it defends against wildfire litigation.<\/p>\n (Reporting by Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Costas Pitas and Ismail Shakil; Editing by David Ljunggren and Deepa Babington)<\/p>\n \n Topics Was this article valuable?<\/p>\n \n Yes Here are more articles you may enjoy.<\/p>\n Interested in Catastrophe?<\/p>\n Get automatic alerts for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PacifiCorp, a utility owned by Berkshire Hathaway, agreed to pay $575 million to resolve U.S. government damages claims…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,40198,25867,1846,20275,89008,5675],"class_list":["post-189671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-wildfire","tag-claims","tag-lawsuit","tag-liability","tag-oregon-wildfire","tag-settlement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Catastrophe<\/a>
\n Natural Disasters<\/a>
\n California<\/a>
\n Claims<\/a>
\n Wildfire<\/a>
\n Oregon<\/a>\n <\/p>\n
\n No\n <\/p>\n