BILL ANALYSIS
SB 505
Page 1
Date of Hearing: July 6, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
Nancy Skinner, Chair
SB 505 (Kehoe) - As Amended: June 1, 2009
SENATE VOTE : 24-15
SUBJECT : Local planning: fire hazards: California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) guidelines
SUMMARY : Requires a local government located in areas at risk
of wildfire to consider, by January 1, 2015, specified wildfire
hazard and risks in its review of the safety element of its
General Plan. Requires the Office of Planning and Research
(OPR) to update a fire planning report and propose changes to
CEQA guidelines pertaining to fire risks. Requires the Natural
Resources Agency (NRA) to adopt these changes.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (Board) to
identify all lands, or state responsibility areas (SRAs) where
the state has the primary financial responsibility for
preventing and suppressing fires. Fire prevention and
suppression in areas not classified as SRAs are the
responsibility of local agencies or the federal government.
The board is required to map SRAs every five years.
2)Requires California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
(CDF) to classify and update or reclassify, if necessary, SRAs
into fire hazard severity zones for the purposes of fire
prevention and suppression. Within local responsibility
areas, CDF must identify "very high fire hazard severity
(VHFHS) zones." Both zones must be based on factors including
fuel loading, slope, and fire weather.
3)Pursuant to CEQA, requires lead agencies to prepare an EIR for
a discretionary project if an initial study shows that it may
have a significant effect on the environment. Requires OPR
to prepare guidelines to implement CEQA and to recommend
changes to the guidelines and NRA to certify and adopt these
changes at least once every two years.
4)Requires local governments to adopt a general plan that
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includes, among other things, a safety element. Prior to the
adoption or amendment of this element, a local government with
SRAs or a VHFHS zone must submit a draft element to the Board
and local fire agencies for review and comment.
THIS BILL :
1)Requires OPR, on or before January 1, 2011, to update its
"Fire Hazard Planning" document.
2)Requires, prior to January 1, 2015, and thereafter upon each
revision of a housing element, a safety element to be reviewed
and updated as needed to address the fire risks on SRA lands
and land classified as VHFHS zones. This review must consider
information the "Fire Hazard Planning" document and include
all of the following:
a) Information regarding fire hazards, including, but not
limited to fire hazard severity zone maps, historical data
on wildfires, and information about wildfire hazard areas
that may be available from the United States Geological
Survey.
b) General location and distribution of existing and
planned development in VHFHS zones, including structures,
roads, utilities, and essential public facilities.
c) Local, state, and federal agencies with responsibility
for fire protection, including special districts and local
offices of emergency services.
d) Goals, policies, and objectives for the protection of
the community from the unreasonable risk of wildfire,
including, but not limited to, all of the following:
i) Avoiding or minimizing the unreasonable risks of
wildfire to new development.
ii) Identifying construction design or methods,
including fire resistive construction materials, fuels
management methods, or other methods, to minimize damage
if new development is located in a state responsibility
area or in a VHFHS zone.
iii) Locating, when feasible, new essential public
facilities outside of high fire risk areas, or
identifying construction methods or other methods to
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minimize damage if these facilities are located in a SRA
or VHFHS zone.
iv) Working cooperatively with public agencies with
responsibility for fire protection.
e) Establish a set of feasible implementation measures
designed to carry out the above goals, policies, and
objectives.
3)Imposes a 60 day deadline for the Board to review a draft or
existing safety element.
4)Directs OPR, in cooperation with CDF, on or after January 1,
2010, at the time of the next review of the CEQA guidelines to
prepare, develop, and transmit to NRA recommended changes to
the guidelines regarding fire hazard impacts. NRA must
certify and adopt the recommended changes or amendments.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, $20,000 to OPR to update CEQA guidelines.
COMMENTS : According to the author's office, given the
devastating wildfires the state has recently experienced, the
significant increase in development in the wildfire-urban
interface, and the doubling of fire risk over the next several
decades projected by climate change scientists, "It is in the
state's best interest to ensure that cities and counties do all
they can to engage in comprehensive and consistent fire
prevention and fire protection planning as early in the local
land use planning process as possible for projects in SRAs and
[VHFHS] zones."
1)Background : SRAs primarily consist of privately owned
forestlands, watersheds, and rangelands. According to the
Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO), roughly one-third of the
state or 31 million acres is within SRAa. SRAs lands are
found in every county expect San Francisco and Sutter
Counties. CDF removes lands from SRAs, every five years, when
housing density reaches more than three units per acre.
CDF's role in SRAs is to prevent and suppress wildland fires.
However, CDF is also authorized, but not required, to provide
rescue, first aid, and other emergency services if the
activity does not require additional funds. Moreover, it is
the Board's policy to respond to a structure fire if it
presents a threat to wildlands. Even though state law does
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not require local governments to provide fire protection
within SRAs, in practice they have assumed the responsibility
for structure protection and basic medical assistance.
According to the LAO, about 70 percent of SRAs are covered by
some form of local fire protection, funded by property taxes
or special assessments.
In 2006, while a vast majority of incidents CDF responded to
in SRAs were non-fire medical emergencies, CDF spent about 75
percent of its time fighting wildland fires, 95 percent of
which, according to CDF, were caused by humans. In its
analysis of the 2008-09 budget, the LAO found that CDF's
budget has increased 150% since 1997-98. One of the cost
drivers is increasing development in the wildland urban
interface. Despite the fact that the total acreage in SRA has
remained stable over the last 15 years, the number of housing
units in SRA has increased by 15% over this period. Based on
2005 data, the LAO reports there are about 870,000 housing
units in SRAs and the trend is upward.
2)Preventing fires through better planning : By relying strictly
on planning as a means to minimize the hazards of wildfire,
this bill takes a different approach than last year's SB 1500
(Kehoe), which prohibited a county from approving development
on SRA lands unless it provided sufficient structural fire
protection, but is intended to lead to a similar outcome:
avoiding and minimizing the impacts of wildfire on life and
property.
This bill requires a safety element of a General Plan to be
reviewed and updated, by January 1, 2015, as needed to
consider updated fire planning advice published by OPR and
information such as the location of historical fires, existing
and planned development in fire hazard zones, and agencies
responsible for fire protection. It relies on a similar
planning approach contained in AB 162 (Wolk), Chapter 369,
Statutes of 2007, which required more comprehensive flood
hazard planning through a three-pronged approach of hazard
identification, the development of appropriate goals,
policies, and objectives to minimize flood risks, and feasible
measures to implement the above.
Local governments containing SRAs or within a VHFHS zone are
currently required to submit the safety element of their
General Plan to the Board and local fire agencies for review
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and comment (submission deadlines vary but by December 31,
2015, all local governments must submit their elements to the
Board). The Board reviews about 20 such elements a year but
given resource constraints it can only conduct a cursory
review using a standard template. This review encompasses
many of the same issues required by this bill. However,
without additional resources, expanding the issues to be
included or reviewed in a safety element would undoubtedly
further constrain the ability of the Board to conduct
meaningful reviews.
One of the issues a planning agency must consider in reviewing
its safety element is "avoiding or minimizing the unreasonable
risks of wildfire to new development." Since the bill doesn't
define "unreasonable" one could deduce that it is a risk that
is not "reasonable" but the bill doesn't define this term
either. Instead of "risk," CDF refers to threats to fire
safety as "hazards," which are "based on the physical
conditions that create a likelihood that an area will burn
over a 30 to 50-year period?" Reducing hazards such as
overgrown vegetation, insufficient defensible space, flammable
building materials, and lack of appropriate road access are
measures that planners and fire managers have actual control
over as opposed to risk, which includes an element of
probability outside their control. Thus, the committee and
author may wish to consider amending the bill to replace the
term "unreasonable risk" with "hazard" throughout the bill.
3)Fire hazards may be a significant impact : CEQA requires lead
agencies to prepare an EIR for a discretionary project if an
initial study shows that it may have a significant effect on
the environment. The initial study contains questions that
help a planner determine the significance of a project's
potential impact on the environment, including a project's
wildland fire risks to people or structures. This bill would
require OPR, on or after January 1, 2010, to propose
additional questions regarding a project's potential fire
hazards impacts on SRAs or VHFH severity zones, and directs
NRA to adopt these proposed changes as part of the CEQA
guidelines. In doing so, the bill may effectively create a
new category or subset of environmental impact, the
significance of which may trigger the preparation of an EIR.
4)Technical amendments : Page 9, lines 4-12 should be amended to
read:
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(g)(2)(C)(3): Prior to January 1, 2015, and thereafter upon
each revision of the housing element made pursuant to Section
65588, the safety element shall be reviewed and updated as
needed necessary to address the risk of fire for land
classified as state responsibility areas, as defined in
Section 4102 of the Public Resources Code, and land classified
as very high fire hazard severity zones, as defined in Section
51177.
Page 9, lines 39-40, and page 10, lines 1-3 should be amended
to read:
Identifying construction design or methods, including fire
resistive construction materials, fuels management methods, or
other methods, to minimize damage the potential for ignition
or spread of a structure fire to wildlands or surrounding
areas if new development is located in a state responsibility
area or in a very high fire hazard severity zone.
Page 12, lines 29-38 should be amended to clarify a
duplicative and conflicting requirement:
(3) The State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection shall, and
a local agency may, review the draft or an existing safety
element and recommend changes to the planning agency report
its written recommendations to the planning agency within 60
days of its receipt of the draft or existing safety element.
The State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection and the local
agency shall review the draft or existing safety element
within 60 days of its receipt and may offer written
recommendations for changes to the draft or existing safety
element regarding both of the following:
(A) Uses of land and policies in state responsibility areas
and very high fire hazard severity zones that will protect
life, property, and natural resources from unreasonable risks
associated with wildland fires.
(B) Methods and strategies for wildland fire risk reduction
and prevention within state responsibility areas and very high
hazard severity zones.
5)Dual-referral : On July 1, 2009, the Assembly Local Government
Committee approved this bill, 5-0.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
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Support
California Fire Chiefs Association
California Fire District Association of California
California Professional Firefighters
Sierra Club California
Orange County Professional Firefighters Association, IAFF Local
3631
Mountain Recreation and Conservation Authority
California Native Plant Society
Opposition
California State Association of Counties
Regional Council of Rural Counties
Analysis Prepared by : Dan Chia / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092