This week the California Board of Forestry (BOF) held a public workshop to discuss proposed changes to Articles 4 and 5 of the State Fire Safe regulations. Several BOF members in attendance expressed concern about the expedited pace of the revision process and requested that the staff take a more iterative approach to crafting the new regulations.
BOF staff indicated that it will continue with the current workshop process in hopes that a final draft proposal can be presented to the board for approval at the March 2nd and 3rd meetings. In advance of the next regulatory workshop scheduled for February 9th, a revised draft proposal incorporating changes based on public comment will be released for discussion. All public comment received by the BOF since the first workshop in November is now available for viewing on the BOF website, and will be updated weekly.
The State Fire Safe regulations set forth basic wildfire protection standards for development in the State Responsibility Area and, beginning July 1, 2021, the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones of the Local Responsibility Area. The changes made in the draft rulemaking, will have extraordinary impacts on housing production, not only in rural areas of the state, but also in more urbanized regions of California. For instance, the draft regulations would prohibit any future building construction on property served by a road that has not been upgraded, or that cannot be upgraded to meet current standards, such as dead-end roads. These upgrade requirements include road widening, re-surfacing, leveling grades and curves, and bridge improvements, from the property line to the nearest fire station, and apply to the building of a single residential unit or any business increasing its "service capacity." All required upgrades would be at the expense of the property owner.
RCRC staff has been in discussions with the BOF since April, 2020 on proposed revisions to the State Fire Safe regulations and have offered both written and oral comments on the preceding emergency rulemaking that ultimately made more minor changes to the regulations.
For updates from the BOF on the Fire Safe Regulations and other activities of the BOF Resource Protection Committee, subscribe to email updates here. For more information, please contact Tracy Rhine at trhine@rcrcnet.org.