Forestry: electrical transmission or distribution lines: clearances: notice and opportunity to be heard.

Existing law authorizes any person who owns, controls, operates, or maintains any electrical transmission or distribution line to traverse land as necessary, regardless of land ownership or express permission to traverse land from the landowner, after providing notice and an opportunity to be heard to the landowner, to prune trees to maintain clearances, as provided, and to abate, by pruning or removal, any hazardous, dead, rotten, diseased, or structurally defective live trees. Existing law authorizes this abatement at the full discretion of the person that owns, controls, operates, or maintains the electrical transmission or distribution lines, except for certain applicable minimum clearance requirements for those lines. Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission, which has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations, has established additional vegetation management requirements. This bill would subject property access by an electrical corporation for felling, cutting, or trimming trees to provisions similar to those applicable to pruning trees, maintaining clearances, and abating trees around electrical transmission or distribution lines, including provisions requiring notice to the landowner and an opportunity to be heard. The bill would explicitly require tree felling, cutting, and trimming activities to comply with certain commission vegetation management rules, if applicable, and with the California Coastal Act of 1976 and the forest practice rules and regulations adopted by the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection. The bill would require any trees that are felled, cut, or trimmed, as provided, to remain on the property of the landowner, unless the landowner timely requests the electrical corporation to treat or remove the wood, as specified. The bill would require woody material that was trimmed, cut, or felled to be treated to achieve a maximum postactivity depth of 9 inches when operating within 150 feet of a structure, public road, or other infrastructure, except where the landowner has requested that material to be kept intact. The bill would exempt electrical cooperatives, as defined, from these provisions. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2028. This bill would require the commission, on or before January 1, 2025, to develop, through a public process, standardized content and methods of delivery to be used to satisfy the landowner notice requirement for both vegetation abatement and felling, cutting, and trimming activities, including, among other things, a description of the process that the electrical corporation must provide for a landowner to exercise the opportunity to be heard regarding the proposed pruning, maintaining clearances, abating, felling, cutting, or trimming of trees on property where the electrical corporation does not have existing rights or express landowner permission to do so. Until the standardized content of the notice is developed, the bill would require an electrical corporation to make a good faith effort to communicate the processes associated with the felling, cutting, and trimming of trees under these provisions to the landowner before felling, cutting, or trimming trees on property where the electrical corporation does not have existing rights or the express permission from the landowner. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2028.