Sen. Dodd Introduces Wildfire Planning and Mitigation Measure

SACRAMENTO – Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, introduced legislation today – his proposed Wildfire Mitigation Planning Act -- to help prevent and contain wildfire by coordinating efforts between state, federal and private entities, increasing overall wildfire safety effectiveness while maximizing California’s wildfire response investment.

“Wildfires strike without regard to county lines or utility service areas, so we need a coordinated and comprehensive approach to keeping California safe,” Sen. Dodd said. “We’ve made a lot of progress in recent years, but climate change continues to compound challenges and underscores the need for us to be thoughtful about how we do the most good, as quickly as possible, with our investments.” 

Catastrophic wildfires impose enormous costs on California and its residents. In the aftermath of the Camp Fire, Sen. Dodd coauthored AB 1054, which created a framework for electric utilities to evaluate their wildfire risk and plan for wildfire mitigation investments and activities, overseen by the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety within the California Natural Resources Agency. More recently, the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force, a multi-agency effort to identify needs and develop strategies to better manage wildfire risk, has produced plans to better manage wildfire risk.

Current spending on utility wildfire mitigation exceeds $10 billion per year while state budget wildfire expenditures have grown to $2.7 billion over several years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service announced major wildfire mitigation investments in California and other western states wildfire mitigation activities that will totaling $930 million. No framework exists to evaluate how these multiple activities will interact and might be coordinated to maximize their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Sen. Dodd’s proposed Wildfire Mitigation Planning Act would require the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety to prepare a report every three years to quantify the potential benefits of actions taken by state and private actors to reduce wildfire risk. The bill also would require the office to prepare a wildfire risk baseline, forecasting wildfire risk and risk mitigation potential over the next one to 10 years. It would also mandate another report on annual wildfire mitigation scenarios, quantifying actual risk reduction from all entities and investments within California. Finally, Sen. Dodd’s measure would empower the Office of Electric Infrastructure Safety to coordinate utility spending with the new planning framework in order to maximize the effectiveness of all investments related to wildfires in California.

“Preventing catastrophic wildfire requires strong coordination between all of our investments,” said Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. “Building on current efforts, this bill would create a planning structure to maximize the effectiveness of California's work to reduce the impacts of wildfire. As California spends more to prevent catastrophic wildfire, we should also make sure that these investments go as far as possible in keeping residents safe. This bill creates a planning structure that does just that and ensures that all our efforts are well coordinated.”

The act, also known as Senate Bill 1014, is expected to receive its first committee hearing and vote next month. Any costs of the bill would be covered by private funding, not taxpayer dollars.

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Senator Bill Dodd represents the 3rd Senate District, which includes all or portions of Napa, Solano, Yolo, Sonoma, Contra Costa, and Sacramento counties. You can learn more about the district and Senator Dodd at www.sen.ca.gov/dodd.