California will spend $1 billion on wildfire prevention, help utilities
SACRAMENTO — With an eye toward destructive wildfire as California’s most immediate climate emergency, Gov. Jerry Brown took action on Friday to broadly expand state prevention efforts while allowing utility companies to shift some fire-related costs to their customers.
The far-reaching proposal signed by Brown boosts government fire protection efforts by $1 billion over the next five years, providing funds that could help clear thousands of acres of dense, dry forests and brittle coastal brush. The bill’s combination of cash and regulatory relief mark a major escalation in addressing what’s been called the “new normal” of fire danger for the state, far beyond what’s been spent on immediate emergency responses.
“Wildfires in California aren’t going away, and we have to do everything possible to prevent them,” the governor said in a written statement. “This bill is complex and requires investment — but it’s absolutely necessary.”
Negotiations over the details of the 112-page law dominated the state Capitol during the final weeks of the legislative session. The proposal’s fine points emerged just hours before the final vote on Aug. 31. While many lawmakers found parts of the proposal unpalatable, few were willing to be seen as not having done everything they could to protect the lives and property of their constituents.
“This new law is the most comprehensive wildfire prevention and safety package the state has passed in decades,” state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, the bill’s co-author.
The new law links together two distinct challenges for changing the trajectory of California’s fire future: controlled growth of fire-prone vegetation and reduced financial exposure for utility companies. In a less combustible year, opposition to either could have doomed the effort. But the topic was hard to ignore during a summer marked by a number of deadly blazes and weeks of wildfire smoke choking the skies above Sacramento.
Lawmakers from the state’s most threatened regions — rural foothills with forests overgrown from decades of fire suppression, and coastal communities with kindlinglike chaparral — were adamant about expanding efforts to remove fire fuels. They pushed for $1 billion in funding, paid over five years from proceeds of California’s cap-and-trade climate program, so that government and landowners alike had the money needed to carry out the work.
Cal Fire officials will oversee those dollars, generally divvied into two categories: $165 million a year for fire prevention grants to landowners and for community prevention efforts, and another $35 million to continue Cal Fire’s yearround prescribed burns, research and monitoring.
Under the law signed by Brown, landowners will have new permission and help to reduce overgrowth by cutting down more small and midsized trees — a historic change, given California’s logging limits on privately owned lands date back to 1973.
Timber harvesting permits for small landowners will be made cheaper and some property owners will be allowed to build temporary roads to reach otherwise inaccessible overgrown areas. In some instances, both small and large landowners will have new permission to sell that timber to help offset the costs of the fireprevention activity.
Property owners who apply for new conservation easements — to preserve natural landscapes in exchange for tax incentives — will have to ensure the density and health of their trees doesn’t exacerbate fire danger. The new law also allows a streamlined state review for tree-removal efforts on federal lands.
California’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection will have an expanded role in setting regulations to lower fire risk while hiring more technical experts to ensure the rules actually work. Many of the new law’s provisions will expire in five years unless the Legislature decides to continue or expand the programs.
The tree and brush removal provisions of SB 901 were subject to intense lobbying by environmental groups. But those disagreements paled in comparison to the bitter brawl over its concessions to municipal and investor-owned utilities.
Downed power lines have sparked devastating fires across the state in previous years. Two of the state’s largest electricity providers — Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — both face steep costs related to past wildfires. PG&E has yet to finish tallying the damages it must pay from fires in Napa and Sonoma counties last fall.