Holding The Line Against Wildfires

Yesterday, Sen. Sam Aanestad held a one-sided “Legislative Wildfire Summit” that purported to probe the reason behind the more than 2,000 devastating wildfires that have swept California. Essentially, he explained, more logging in forest areas would lessen the fire problem – and he scolded the governor for not allowing that logging.

The Grass Valley Republican concluded his event by sending out a press release that included the following quote:

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” said Senator Aanestad. “This didn’t have to happen.”

He’s right: it didn’t have to happen – and it doesn’t have to keep happening. Smarter land-use decisions like those advocated by Sierra Club California priority bill SB 1500 (Kehoe) would give CalFire the chance to develop helpful guidance documents for local government, and offer CalFire a greater role in reviewing and commenting on General Plan Safety Elements as well as projects built in State Responsibility Areas and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. And SB 1617 (Kehoe), another Sierra Club California-backed bill, would provide new funds for proactive fire protection by assessing a $50 fee on the houses that are already in this fire-prone area – helping to address the problem of fire protection for homes already in unsafe areas.

But Senator Aanestad has voted against SB 1500 and SB 1617, just as he voted against a 2004 bill that increased defensible space requirements, Senate Bill 1369. Now state law, the bill requires clearing 100 feet of defensible space around homes in fire-prone areas – a move the insurance industry has credited with saving homes during wildfire.

A robust fire suppression program to protect lives and homes will always need to be a core part of California’s fire management efforts. Still, 2008’s tragic fires have reminded us all that we can’t address fire with suppression alone – we need to get smarter about how we plan and prepare for inevitable fires, and stop exacerbating the problem by building homes in harm’s way.

We best honor those who have died and suffered in these wildfires not by getting mad, but by pledging to make good planning decisions that keep families and firefighters out of harm’s way.

Please encourage your representatives to support SB 1500 and SB 1617, to protect homes, families and firefighters.

photo by Robert A. Eplett, OES California

RECENT COVERAGE:

Republicans want more aggressive forest thinning (Contra Costa Times)

Lawmakers develop letter to governor on flame prevention (Redding Record-Searchlight)

Conservationists: Fire protection not easily obtained (Chico Enterprise-Record)

Fire Protection For The Future

As California’s brave firefighters battle nearly 1,300 blazes statewide, Sierra Club California continues to push for new laws that we hope will create a legal “fire break” for our state.

While they won’t change the state’s current fire danger, they do help shape our future safety – both by changing the way communities plan their growth in fire-prone, state-controlled areas and by holding homeowners to simple defensible-space mandates.

photo by Robert A. Eplett, OES

Join us in supporting these simple steps toward a safer future:

Assembly Bill 2447 (Jones): Requires counties to prove adequate fire protection before approving development in high-fire-risk areas, and ensure that developments are designed safely. Pending in Senate Appropriations Committee.

Senate Bill 1500 (Kehoe): Requires cities and counties to notify state fire officials when they plan to build in state-protected, fire-prone areas (some 31 million acres, statewide), and determine who will provide fire protection for the new home before it's built. Pending in Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Senate Bill 1617 (Kehoe): Assesses a modest $50 fee on homeowners in fire-prone, state-protected areas (State Responsibility Areas) in order to fund fire prevention activities. Pending in Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Senate Bill 1595 (Kehoe): Updates the existing requirement for homeowners to maintain 100 feet of defensible space around their home. Pending in Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Assembly Bill 2859 (Gaines): Makes it easier to clear areas around homes and communities. Pending in Senate Appropriations Committee.


The Flash Report had good things to say about SB 1500 -- proving that planning for safer homes and ensuring that state taxpayers don't subsidize the cost or rural sprawl isn't a partisan issue.

Your donation helps us promote legislation that protects wilderness and human health.

Sierra Club California 2008 Priority Bills

Smart Growth/Global Warming. SB 375 (Steinberg) would require certain regional transportation plans to include a sustainable communities strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Would provide incentives for more compact development, reduced driving, greater housing choices and conservation of farmland and habitat.

Clean Energy. SB 411 (Simitian and Perata) would require investor-owned utilities to meet a Renewables Portfolio Standard of at least 33 percent by 2020.

Cleaner Air at Ports. SB 974 (Lowenthal) would charge containers shipped through the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland in order to raise money for air quality and transportation improvements.

Land Use/Fire Protection. SB 1500 (Kehoe) would allow the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to require local governments to guarantee adequate structural fire protection before approving development in high-fire-hazard State Responsibility Areas.

Fire Protection. SB 1617 (Kehoe) would establish a fair and equitable new fee on homes in State Responsibility Areas to fund some of the costs of their fire protection. The fee would be tiered to give incentives for reducing fire risks, and would also fund proactive prevention activities.

Safer Products. AB 1879 (Feuer and Huffman) would give the Department of Toxic Substances Control the authority to establish safeguards to protect people and the environment from consumer products containing known toxins like lead, mercury and arsenic.

Recycling Mercury Thermostats. AB 2347 (Ruskin) would require manufacturers to establish a program for recycling thermostats containing mercury, a potent neurotoxin.

Water Conservation. AB 2175 (Laird and Feuer) would establish numeric water savings targets for urban and agricultural water use and require a 20% reduction in statewide urban per capita water use by 2020.

Outdoor Education. AB 2989 (Fuentes) would create a permanent program in the Department of Parks and Recreation that would award grants to schools and non-profit groups that provide outdoor education and recreational opportunities for youth.

State of the State Address Misses Opportunities

While we had hoped that Governor Schwarzenegger would use the State of the State to roll out important new programs regarding green chemistry and better fire planning, the speech was largely devoid of details.

As expected, the Governor led with last Fall’s tragic Southern California wildfires. One of the key lessons from those fires is that we need to get smarter about how and where we build. If local governments continue to approve building projects in areas where the state is expected to provide fire protection, costs and loss of life will continue to increase. Rather than describing a vision of proactive planning to protect lives as well as wildlands, the Governor focused exclusively on thanking the heroes. We join in lauding the Californians who stepped up during the crisis, but we were hoping for more proactive planning to prevent future crises.

Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger continues to push for the building of more expensive dams as a solution to California's water problems. The Governor's insistence on new dams has lead to a stalemate with the Legislature, which favors investments in water conservation, water recycling and groundwater cleanup. We hope that the Governor will work with the Legislature on solutions to our state's water problems that do not involve new dams.

On the bright side, environmentalists are always pleased to hear the Governator repeat his promise to sue the Bush Administration as often as necessary to obtain the waiver necessary for California’s clean-car standards to take effect.

Environmentalists who had heard that new initiatives to address toxins in consumer products or the plastics choking our oceans might appear in the State of the State speech were disappointed, as Schwarzenegger missed an opportunity to put those problems high on his agenda. The Governor did make a general promise to put forward “many” legislative proposals on energy and the environment, but offered no specifics as to what they may be. (During his four-plus years in office, Schwarzenegger has so far made very few legislative proposals of his own, preferring to respond to the bills initiated by legislators.)

The Governor’s proposal for a Strategic Growth Council has the admirable purpose of bringing together his administration’s economic development programs with its environmental sustainability concerns; during this and previous administrations, growth and sustainability have too often been considered in isolation from each other. But the administration needs to provide more details on how this council will allocate bond funds, and needs to make sure that it respects the wishes of the voters who approved the bonds and that it works with the Legislature on appropriating the money.

Big Victory for National Forests

Sierra Club Victory in Ninth Circuit Deals Blow to Bush Administration’s So-Called "Healthy Forests" Initiative

Court Rules That Administration Cannot Ignore Environmental Laws to Log Forests

San Francisco, California--In the case of Sierra Club v. Bosworth, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Forest Service erred when it conducted logging projects nationwide without prior analysis of their effects on the environment.

Sierra Club and Sierra Forest Legacy (formerly named Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign) filed the suit in October 2004 challenging the Bush Administration's "Healthy Forest Initiative" rule that eliminated a 30-year-old Forest Service practice of analyzing the environmental effects of timber sales up to 1,000 acres and prescribed burns up to 4,500 acres
before allowing such projects to proceed.

Today’s ruling from the Ninth Circuit said the U.S. Forest Service erred because it:

• Exempted from the National Environmental Policy Act a huge class of logging classified as "fuels reduction" first, and then later gathered the environmental impact data
• Failed to assess the cumulative effects of logging 1.2 million acres per year nationwide
• Failed to assess highly controversial and uncertain risks of impacts
• Failed to put more specific constraints on what can be logged

Statement of Eric Huber, Senior Staff Attorney, Sierra Club

"This victory is a blow to the Bush Administration's cynical "Healthy Forests" initiative and will help protect millions of acres of national forest each year from destructive and unnecessary logging projects. This ruling will help ensure that vast swaths of our national forests are not logged without environmental reviews under the guise of forest management or fuel suppression. The Sierra Club supports forest management practices that actually seek to protect communities and our precious wild forests and minimize the risk of wildfires, but this case is just one more example of the Bush administration's disastrous overreach on environmental issues.

The courts have once again had to tell the administration that it simply cannot ignore laws--environmental and otherwise--simply because it finds them inconvenient."

Statement of Craig Thomas, Executive Director of Sierra Forest Legacy
"In California, since the adoption of the Bush Administration rule, we have witnessed the gross abuse of discretion and ramp-up of logging with limited environmental review that we feared. Logging without environmental safeguards damages our forests and the public's trust in Forest Service management."

The full opinion can be viewed here.