2021 California Monument Fire - Engine crew battles flames
Credit: USDA
May 23, 2024 - SACRAMENTO, Calif.— The California Assembly passed a bill on Wednesday that would pave the way for more development across the state’s very high fire hazard severity zones. Assembly Bill 3150 would streamline large-scale developments by allowing developers to petition to redesignate risky wildfire zones to a lower classification.
A.B. 3150, which would also offer a way for developers to avoid home hardening and other fire-risk reduction measures, now awaits state Senate consideration.
“Developing in the state’s most wildfire-prone areas is a matter of life and death, so this bill is a serious threat,” said J.P. Rose, policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Urban Wildlands program. “At a time when communities are still recovering from recent fires and face increasing extreme weather, lawmakers need to stand on the side of public health and safety, not with profit-seeking developers. I hope our state senators see the obvious dangers of this bad policy and work on sorely needed solutions to the housing crisis that don’t put communities directly in the path of fire.”
Since 2016 development in risky areas in California has caused more than 200 deaths, more than 50,000 burned structures, hundreds of thousands of evacuations, smoke and air pollution affecting millions of people, and more than $150 billion in fire suppression costs and economic losses.
A report from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office revealed that building more homes in the wildland urban interface is among the factors that “magnify the wildfire threat and place substantially more people and property at risk than ever before.”
By giving developers an opportunity to redesignate wildfire-prone areas, A.B. 3150 would allow builders to skirt defensive space requirements, home hardening, and other strategies that make new development safer. The proposed legislation also offers developers an avenue to potentially avoid environmental review and bypass public decision-making processes for some big, new developments.
This bill is opposed by a coalition of 35 community and environmental organizations.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Source: Center for Biological Diversity
