Fire prevention: wildfire risk: defensible space and fuels reduction management.

(1) Existing law requires the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection to identify areas in the state as very high fire hazard severity zones based on specified criteria and the severity of the fire hazard. Existing law requires that a person who owns, leases, controls, operates, or maintains an occupied dwelling or structure in, upon, or adjoining a mountainous area, forest-covered land, brush-covered land, grass-covered land, or land that is covered with flammable material that is within a very high fire hazard severity zone, as designated by a local agency, or a building or structure in, upon, or adjoining those areas or lands within a state responsibility area, to maintain a defensible space of 100 feet from each side and from the front and rear of the structure, as specified. A repeated violation within a specified timeframe of those requirements is a crime. This bill would require a person described above to utilize more intense fuel reductions between 5 and 30 feet around the structure, and to create an ember-resistant zone within 5 feet of the structure, as provided. Because a violation of these provisions would be a crime or expand the scope of an existing crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. This bill would require each local agency having jurisdiction of property upon which conditions that are regulated by the defensible space provisions described above apply and the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to make reasonable efforts to provide notice to affected residents of the above requirements before imposing penalties for a violation of those requirements. By imposing additional duties on local agencies, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program. This bill would authorize the department, subject to availability of funding, to make local fire prevention grants available to certain entities to improve compliance with defensible space requirements in very high fire hazard severity zones through the creation of defensible space assessment or inspection programs. This bill would require the director to establish a statewide program to allow qualified entities, as defined, to support and augment the department in its defensible space and home hardening assessment and education efforts and to establish a common reporting platform for participating qualified entities to report defensible space and home hardening assessment data to the department. The bill would require the department to develop and implement a training program to train individuals to support and augment the department in its defensible space and home hardening assessment and education efforts. The bill would require the department to issue to individuals who have successfully completed the training program a certification of completion. The bill would require the director, by January 1, 2024, to submit to the Legislature a report on the effectiveness of the statewide program. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2025. (2) Existing law requires the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to develop, periodically update, and post on its internet website a guidance document on fuels management for purposes of very high fire hazard severity zones, as designated by a local agency, and requires the guidance document to include, but not be limited to, regionally appropriate vegetation management suggestions that preserve and restore native species. This bill would limit these native species, for purposes of the guidance document, to those that are fire resistant or drought tolerant, or both. (3) Existing law requires a person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains an electrical transmission or distribution line upon mountainous land, or in forest-covered land, brush-covered land, or grass-covered land, to maintain certain clearances between all vegetation and all conductors that are carrying electric current during those times and in those areas determined to be necessary by the Director of Forestry and Fire Protection or the agency with primary responsibility for the fire protection of those areas. A violation of this provision and other specified provisions relating to fire prevention requirements is a crime. This bill would require the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission and any person who owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution lines, on or before July 1, 2021, to develop, through a public process, an online guidebook of vegetation, including tree and shrub species, that, if planted in the vicinity of electrical transmission and distribution lines, cannot encroach within the vicinity of overhead conductors, as provided. For purposes of this provision, and other specified provisions related to firebreaks and vegetation clearance around electrical transmission or distribution lines, as provided, the bill would define person to mean, among other things, a county, city, district, or other local public agency. By expanding the duties of a local public agency, the bill would create a state-mandated local program. The bill would require the guidebook to include, but not be limited to, guidelines for planting underneath and to the side of conductors of varying voltages, as provided. The bill would require the department, the Public Utilities Commission, an electrical corporation, and a local publicly owned electric utility to make available on their respective internet websites the above-described guidebook. (4) Existing law sets forth findings and declarations of the Legislature relating to the benefits of the state's expertise in wildland fire prevention and vegetation management on forest, range, and watershed lands. This bill would revise those findings and declarations of the Legislature. (5) Existing law requires the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to assist local governments in preventing future wildland fire and vegetation management problems by making its wildland fire prevention and vegetation management expertise available to local governments to the extent possible within the department's budgetary limitations. This bill instead would require the department to assist local governments in preventing future high-intensity wildland fires and instituting appropriate fuels management by making its wildland fire prevention and vegetation management expertise available to local governments to the extent possible within the department's budgetary limitations. The bill would explicitly define, for these purposes, "local governments" to include cities, counties, and special districts. (6) Existing law authorizes a county, by resolution, to loan moneys to certain local and regional districts to enable those districts to perform their functions and meet their obligations. This bill would include a resource conservation district as a district eligible for a loan from a county. (7) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that with regard to certain mandates no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason. With regard to any other mandates, this bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs so mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.