Forestry: fuels transportation program: biomass energy facility: grant program.

The Z'berg-Nejedly Forest Practice Act of 1973 prohibits a person from conducting timber operations, defined to mean the cutting or removal, or both, of timber or other solid wood forest products from timberlands for commercial purposes, unless a timber harvesting plan prepared by a registered professional forester has been submitted for the operations to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The act provides an exception from its provisions for timber operations that involve the removal of trees less than 16 inches in diameter at breast height from a firebreak or fuelbreak if the removal meets specified requirements, including the requirement that the removed trees will not be processed into logs or lumber. The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 designates the State Air Resources Board as the state agency charged with monitoring and regulating sources of emissions of greenhouse gases. The act authorizes the state board to include the use of market-based compliance mechanisms. Existing law requires all moneys, except for fines and penalties, collected by the state board as part of a market-based compliance mechanism to be deposited in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and to be available upon appropriation. The Administrative Procedure Act generally governs the procedure for the adoption, amendment, or repeal of regulations by state agencies and for the review of those regulatory actions by the Office of Administrative Law. This bill would require the Natural Resources Agency to develop and implement a fuels transportation program that provides competitive grants or other financial incentives for projects in eligible communities to offset the costs of transporting fuels to a biomass energy facility, as specified. The bill would authorize the agency to allocate moneys from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund consistent with the purposes of the fund. The bill would exempt these provisions from the Administrative Procedure Act.