After the deadliest and most destructive four-year stretch of wildfires in modern California history, Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in January determined to escalate state efforts to limit fire threats and to adopt safer building and fire maintenance practices. Within days, he promised $305 million in additional funding and tasked the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, with identifying the populated areas most at risk and in need of state attention.

Cal Fire responded in March with a 28-page report that identified 35 priority sites. Many were in Northern California in elevated, forested areas. Several were part of the Bay Area, including in Orinda and Woodside. The agency has already begun work on removing flammable brush, building fire breaks to slow the spread of blazes and improving escape routes.

“California needs an all-of-the-above approach,” declared Cal Fire Director Thom Porter.

But Cal Fire officials also told the San Francisco Chronicle that while the additional resources the state was providing were welcome, they still weren’t enough given the fire risks that California faced. Citing the “massive backlog of forest management work,” Cal Fire said a long-term commitment was crucial.

Cal Fire far short of 33 percent home inspection goal

Three months later, a new report has underscored Cal Fire’s warning of the inadequacy of state efforts at a time in which as many as 3 million homes in the Golden State are in areas with elevated fire risks. KQED, the Northern California Public Broadcasting Service news agency, reports that Cal Fire isn’t coming close to meeting its goals of helping homeowners build “defensible spaces” around their structures that limit fire risks. The report found that Cal Fire did far worse in helping homeowners in unincorporated areas at high risk in Northern and Central California than local governments did helping homeowners in Southern California.

Lake County in the state’s Wine Country was devastated by 2018’s Mendocino Complex blaze, which scorched a record 459,000 acres. Lake County officials say 45 percent of its land was burned. But Cal Fire said it was only able to inspect 12 percent of homes last year in Lake, Sonoma and Napa Counties to ensure that flammable brush and other materials were removed. The agency’s goal is 33 percent.

Hundreds of miles to the southeast in the Sierra Nevada region – home to tens of millions of dead and very flammable trees – Cal Fire was able to inspect only 6 percent of homes in 2018.

Cal Fire officials have said with fire season lasting 50 days longer or more than it used to in the Golden State, they have no choice but to prioritize their limited resources by placing fighting active wildfires ahead of fire safety efforts.

But the agency is trying to do more to promote defensible space. It has hired six fire crews this year and plans to add four more by summer 2020 which focus only on reducing flammable vegetation and waste.

Newsom has already declared fire emergency

For his part, Newsom on March 22 took a step that would have seemed bizarre in past decades. Though no serious fires were then reported in California, he declared an ongoing formal state of emergency over wildfire risks.

Lead levels plague eight CA areas

Good morning. Happy Hump Day. The Legislature returns today, although don’t expect too much action. But next week, Gov. Brown will introduce his budget and Rep. Xavier Becerra will have a confirmation hearing to be the state’s attorney general. So things won’t be quiet for long. 

We begin today with a story off the beaten path. The water contamination scandal in Flint, Michigan, triggered national outrage and prompted Congress last month to pass a bill rushing $120 million in federal aid to the city.

The local regulators who knew about the severity of lead contamination and protected themselves but not the community are facing criminal charges. That’s because a high presence of lead in the blood is associated with low IQs and cognitive problems and can be devastating for infants and children.

Now a massive study by Reuters — based on federal health data from 21 states and broken down by ZIP code — points to eight areas in California with problems as bad or worse than what is now seen in Flint, where 5 percent of tested children have elevated levels of lead in their blood. The national norm is 2.5 percent.

CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:

• “An Orange County assemblyman is under fire from his right, center and left over a column published last week titled: ‘California Democrats legalize child prostitution.’ The column set off a war of words over the difference between legalization and decriminalization, with critics panning the column as ‘misleading,’ ‘irresponsible’ and ‘an unsubstantiated hot take.'” CalWatchdog has more. 

• Democratic legislative leaders hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as outside counsel to “advise on potential legal challenges with the incoming Trump administration,” according to a statement sent this morning. Story coming later. 

• “California’s housing affordability challenges remain daunting and continue to increase, according to a draft report from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development released Tuesday.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• “A series of powerful storms is set to soak California over the next week, bringing heavy rains, flooding risk in some creeks and 10 feet or more of new snow to the Sierra Nevada — the latest sign that the stranglehold of the state’s five-year drought is significantly weakening.” The San Jose Mercury News has more. 

Legislature:

• In today. Assembly at 1 p.m., Senate at 2 p.m. 

Gov. Brown:

• On vacation in Hawaii until Sunday, according to The Sacramento Bee. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @617Bball

New laws going in effect

Good morning. Happy Hump Day. Your Morning Read author just flew back from D.C. last night from a holiday visit. But we’re back online, with the new year, and new laws, rapidly approaching.  

Gov. Jerry Brown signed 898 bills into law last year. Most start on Jan. 1, but others are going into effect in coming years. The majority of new laws deal with minutiae that’s unlikely to affect most residents, but a number of them will have real-world consequences for broad numbers of people – on issues ranging from new driving rules to patients’ access to experimental medications.

CalWatchdog has a sampling of some of the significant new laws from last session, which range from legalized lane splitting, to registering ammo purchases, to higher minimum wages and unpaid leave. 

In other news:

• Speaking of stricter gun and ammo laws: “(S)ales of semi-automatic rifles have more than doubled in California over last year,” reports the The San Jose Mercury News/AP. 

• Pensions: “The California Public Employees’ Retirement System has not had a good 2016. Its investment returns were microscopic, it faced sharp criticism from a prominent financial website for alleged unethical behavior and Gov. Jerry Brown had to intervene to prevent the nation’s largest pension fund from continuing to enable late-career pension spiking by public employees. But year’s end brought good news of a morbid nature to CalPERS, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and all agencies with actuarial responsibilities: It appears that U.S. life expectancy has plateaued.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• Ghost Ship Fire: “A review of public inspection records, city emails and interviews shows that the city of Oakland for more than a decade often failed to conduct safety inspections on illegally converted warehouses, even those that were well known. Without the inspections, the city could not require owners to bring the building up to code or force the residents out.” The Los Angeles Times has more.  

• Water: “The Sierra Nevada snowpack remains almost 30 percent below average for this time of year despite a boost from the weekend storm, state water officials reported Tuesday, as agencies begin snow surveys by hand throughout the mountain range.” The San Jose Mercury News has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone till January. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @JakeSaltzman1

The latest measurement …  showed that the “snowpack is growing quite nicely.”

 

Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the California Department of Water Resources, said the measurement was 130 percent of average at Phillips Station off Highway 50 near Sierra-at-Tahoe Road. He says the storms are making a difference in building snowpack so far this winter.

 

“These are not major storms, but they are making a difference in terms of snowpack accumulation,” Gehrke says. Gehrke says “this snow is not going anywhere” and will be important for “reservoir recovery.”

 

Both the depth and water content at Phillips Tuesday were the highest since 2005, when a depth of 77.1 inches and water content of 29.9 inches were recorded, according to the DWR.

While the snowpack is the most crucial measurement, since the water it provides lasts for months to come and helps communities statewide, the drought news was also good on many other fronts. Here’s one example:

San Francisco recorded an impressive 6.94 inches of rain during the month, far above the 4.5 inches it averages in January and the most the city has seen in any January since 2008 … . The total, in fact, is more than the city received over the past five Januarys combined. (Don’t forget: San Francisco saw no rain for the first time in 165 years of record-keeping in January of last year.)

That’s from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Water officials: Too early to ease tough rules

But as the Sacramento Bee reported, state officials object to any complacency on the drought front:

California’s drought regulators agreed Tuesday to extend water conservation mandates through the end of October. The decision came in spite of increasing evidence that El Niño is delivering better-than-average precipitation, including an encouraging measurement of the Sierra Nevada snowpack recorded just hours earlier.

 

The new regulations adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board mean urban Californians will have to reduce their water usage between March and October by about 23.4 percent compared with the baseline year of 2013.

 

That represents a slight easing of the existing mandates expiring this month, which require a savings rate of 25 percent compared to 2013. Sacramentans will be among the main beneficiaries of the relaxed rules, as the state board voted to ease requirements for hot inland communities where it takes more water to keep trees and lawns alive.

Nevertheless, as CalWatchdog reported on Jan. 19, state officials have already acted to ease conservation rules announced by Gov. Jerry Brown a year ago. Bureaucrats appear to be trying to strike a balance — acknowledging good news on the water supply front without discouraging conservation efforts that have been strikingly successful at times.