Defensible space, water savings and your wildfire fee

What HB 48 actually does

The bill took effect on January 1, 2026. It enacts a new Part 4 of Utah Code Chapter 65A-8, along with Section 17-16-22 on county evaluation and fees and Section 31A-22-1310 on insuring wildland urban interface property.

Three things follow from it. First, adoption of the building standard is no longer optional for local government. Under Section 65A-8-203(9)(a), when the state adopts an edition of the Utah Wildland Urban Interface Code, the county shall adopt and enforce it for unincorporated areas and the relevant municipality shall adopt and enforce it for incorporated areas, with two years to follow any later edition.

Second, Section 17-16-22(3) requires that beginning January 1, 2026, a county officer shall annually assess a fee against the owner of high risk wildland urban interface property, in the amount set by the Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. Under subsection (4), a county may hold a political subdivision lien on the property for a fee that is past due.

Third, there is an evaluation behind the fee. Section 65A-8-401(2) defines a triage scale as a scale with three classifications, adopted by the Division, used to evaluate and classify property in the wildland urban interface as to what actions are needed to prepare it for fire. A wildland urban interface coordinator performs the evaluation.

The fee, exactly as the statute writes it

Section 65A-8-402(4) is short and it is the whole of what the statute says about the amount. The Division shall annually set a fee amount that is based on the square footage of a structure within the high risk wildland urban interface, to pay for the costs of implementing this part, to be assessed and collected by a county. And the Division may tier the fee amount to account for what level on the triage scale a property is assigned by a coordinator.

That is it. The dollar figures are not in the bill. They are set by the Division annually and by administrative rule, and anyone quoting you a schedule should be able to tell you which rule it came from. We do not publish a number we cannot cite.

One more thing in the statute matters to a homeowner and is easy to miss. Under Section 65A-8-402(2), after the evaluation the coordinator has to tell the owner three things: the triage classification, the fee owed, and the resources available from the Division or the county to bring the property to the first or second classification. The classification is meant to be something you can move.

Whether you are in it

The fee applies to high risk wildland urban interface property, and Section 65A-8-401(1) defines that by reference to a specific instrument: the wildfire risk assessment mapping tool required under Section 65A-8-203(8)(a). The Division develops and maintains that tool, with boundaries established by rule, using a scientific assessment focused on the risk to dwellings.

So there is one authoritative answer to the question of whether your property is inside, and it is that map. Not an insurance letter, not a neighbourhood rumour, and not our opinion at the kitchen table.

Adoption of the code by your city is mandatory rather than discretionary, so the useful question is not whether your jurisdiction has adopted it but where the process currently stands. Your city's building department is the place to ask.

What it changed for insurance

This is the part of HB 48 that gets the least attention and affects the most people. From January 1, 2026, Section 31A-22-1310 restricts insurers to the Division's wildfire risk assessment mapping tool boundary when deciding whether a property is high risk wildland urban interface. A carrier cancelling or not renewing for wildfire risk has to state the facts behind the decision with reasonable precision, and a premium increase of more than 20 percent over the prior term has to be explained on request.

And beginning January 1, 2028, under Section 65A-8-402(3)(b), the Division maintains a database a wildland urban interface insurer may access to learn a property's triage classification. The classification will not stay private to you and the county.

The three zones

The physical work is organised by distance from the structure. The national convention divides it at 0 to 5 feet, 5 to 30 feet and 30 to 100 feet. Utah State University Extension's publication, Landscaping in the Utah Wildland-Urban Interface, names the first zone 0 to 30 feet with a hardened sub-zone inside the first five, and the second 30 to 100. The substance is the same.

Zero to five feet is the one that decides the outcome. USU's language is blunt: there should not be anything flammable next to, on, or within five feet of the house. Exterior materials in the nonflammable category, which the publication names as stucco, concrete and asphalt shingles. In practice this strip is gravel, pavers, flagstone or bare mineral ground, and nothing else.

Five to thirty feet takes sparse, low-growing plantings, watered adequately so they do not dry out. That is the sentence that reconciles fire work with irrigation work: a drip-irrigated plant is a fire-resistant plant, and a dead one is fuel.

Thirty to a hundred feet is about keeping the fuel discontinuous rather than removing it. Plant in small clumps, not in large patches. Space tree canopies at least twenty feet apart. Remove lower branches so fire cannot climb into the canopy. USU calls this zone ideal for turfgrass and paved surfaces. Propane tanks want a ten foot buffer clear of flammable material.

What burns near a house

USU names the hazardous category directly: conifers, meaning pines, spruces, firs and junipers, which contain flammable compounds and ignite more quickly because of their needle composition. The fire-resistant choices it names are broadleaf, maples, oaks, ash and lindens, with smaller species providing less fuel.

That has a specific local consequence and it is not a comfortable one. Junipers are one of the most common foundation plantings in Washington County. A mature juniper against a wall sits in the five foot zone, holds years of dead interior material, and is on the hazardous list. If there is one plant to move out of the ignition zone first, it is that one.

Mulch is the other quiet problem. USU's own figure flags flammable wood mulch as a less than ideal feature near a structure. Wood chips are excellent horticulture and they are also fuel, so they belong out past the first five feet, with rock or gravel against the building.

The same rule reaches ornamental grasses even though the publication does not name them. Nothing flammable belongs within five feet of the house. Grasses build standing dead thatch, so they go outside the ignition zone and get cut back annually, which the District's perennial guidance recommends anyway.

One clause in the code shows how seriously the state takes this work. Under Section 15A-5-203, a single-family dwelling is exempt from a residential fire sprinkler requirement if it is outside the wildland urban interface, built in a one-lot subdivision, and has fifty feet of defensible space on all sides. Defensible space is already, in that one narrow case, a code-recognised substitute for a sprinkler system.

Why one job does three things

A water-wise conversion and a defensible space project are largely the same physical work. One conversion can lower the water bill, qualify for the water district's landscape rebate, and move a property toward a lower triage classification. The reason to design for all three at once is that the three sets of rules mostly agree, and where they disagree it is expensive to find out afterwards.

Where the two goals disagree

Every rebated conversion attaches a conservation easement to the converted area. It continues in perpetuity, runs with the land, binds heirs and assigns, is recorded with the Washington County Recorder and shows up in a title search. Inside that area, irrigated grass, spray irrigation, pools, ponds and water features are prohibited forever. Enforcement is by aerial imagery, and a violation runs written notice, 45 days to cure, then repayment of the full rebate plus administrative costs plus five percent annual interest.

Now put that next to USU calling turfgrass ideal in the thirty to hundred foot zone. If a green buffer might ever be wanted out there, that ground must be left outside the conversion area, and the decision has to be made before the pre-approval site visit. Afterwards it is permanent.

A well-designed conversion does most of the defensible space work for free. It only works that way if it was designed for both from the beginning.

• Organic mulch. Good soil practice, and flagged as flammable near a structure. Rock in the first five feet, wood chips further out; the rebate accepts either, as long as the mulch is permeable to air and water.
• Conifers. Present in the county plant guide and named as hazardous by USU. Keep them well away from the structure and use them as specimen trees.
• Density. The rebate wants 50 percent living cover at maturity; defensible space wants separation. Well-spaced trees over a sparse understory satisfy both, since the District counts a tree at 350 square feet. Fifteen tightly packed shrubs satisfy the rebate and fail the fire logic.
• The easement, which cannot be undone. Read it before the site visit.

More under water-wise landscape

• Artificial turf, measured: 200 degrees on a 98 degree day
• Getting a Level 2 charger installed here
• Above the flood zone and still at risk