California lawmakers seek $2.5 billion to protect homes from wildfires, thin forests

A group of legislators is pushing a bill to spend $2.5 billion on wildfire prevention in California, with the costs borne by ratepayers of PG&E Corp. and other major utilities.

With the legislative session winding down and wildfires burning more than 1.3 million acres in California in the past week, AB 1659 would dedicate funding for battling climate change and accelerating the thinning of forests and other heavily-vegetated areas. Money would also be spent on “home hardening” and the creation of “defensible space” around communities and homes.

The latest round of wildfires, triggered by lightning strikes, have destroyed more than 1,000 homes and other buildings, mainly in Northern California. Home hardening — the installation of fire-resilient roofing and other measures — could have reduced the damage, said bill co-author Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica.

“These are homes that appear to not have had the benefit of current technology of how to protect a home from fire,” Bloom said in an interview Wednesday.

The bill would take an unusual approach toward funding.

As it is, ratepayers and shareholders of the major utilities are paying for a $21 billion insurance pool created by the Legislature last year to shield the companies from liabilities caused by new fires. The ratepayers’ share comes from extending, for another 15 years, a 96 cents-a-month surcharge that’s been on customer bills since the energy crisis nearly 20 years ago, when the state had to step in and buy power for the three big utilities.

To pay for the wildfire-prevention programs, Bloom’s legislation would extend the ratepayer surcharge for another decade, to 2045. However, that extension wouldn’t apply to the shareholders, Bloom said.

The bill is designed to address some of the most sorely-needed prevention programs.

For instance, a McClatchy investigation showed that homes built to strict, modern building codes were more likely to survive the Camp Fire, which destroyed more than 12,000 buildings in Paradise in November 2018. With much of California’s housing stock built well before these codes took effect, experts say home-hardening retrofits could be one of the most effective forms of fire prevention available.

Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year proposed spending $100 million on home hardening, but removed the money from the budget after the economy tanked in March and the surplus disappeared.

Much of the money would be allocated through grants to Cal Fire and the Natural Resources Agency, as well as county fire-safe councils and other organizations. Among other things, the bill would dedicate $100 million to repair damage done to state parks. Fire ripped through the state’s oldest park, Big Basin Redwoods in Santa Cruz County, raising fears of massive devastation, but the Associated Press reported that that giant redwoods were largely intact.

In addition, $300 million would go toward water projects “to improve water supply reliability for fire fighting in areas at high risk,” the bill says. That would include $50 million to help repair the Friant-Kern Canal, a major irrigation channel on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley.

The concrete canal has sagged badly because of widespread groundwater pumping by farmers, particularly during the drought, causing the ground to sink — and taking a segment of the canal down with it, dramatically reducing its ability to deliver water to downstream farmers.

This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 1:38 PM with the headline "California lawmakers seek $2.5 billion to protect homes from wildfires, thin forests."