This week, the California Board of Forestry (BOF) released proposed revisions to its State Fire Safe regulations. These rules set forth basic wildfire protection standards for development in Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones of both the State Responsibility Area (SRA) and the Local Responsibility Area (LRA) beginning July 1, 2021.
The draft rulemaking, presented at the BOF Joint Committee on Tuesday, provided the first opportunity for the public to evaluate the specific changes being proposed to the fire safe standards. At the meeting, RCRC staff conveyed serious concerns regarding the scope of the changes, and the extraordinary impacts this proposal will have 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 of this year 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. RCRC has formed a working group of local government partners and other interested stakeholders, to provide coordinated comments on the current draft regulation, which are scheduled to be considered at the January, 2021 BOF meeting.
The proposed rulemaking can be found here. For more information, please contact Tracy Rhine at Trhine@rcrcnet.org.