Gov. Newsom signs SB-85 which provides $536 million for wildfire and forest resiliency

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed into law SB 85, a $536 million wildfire and forest resiliency budget package in hopes of helping California prepare for another dry wildfire season from the southern to northern reaches of the state. It will help fund fire resilience efforts including fuel breaks, forest health projects, and home hardening across the state. Some of those funds will be headed to Lake Tahoe and the Sierra.

"Governor Newsom’s funding package includes dedicated funding for the Tahoe Conservancy and California State Parks for restoring resilience on state lands. It will also support CAL FIRE’s and the California Conservation Corp’s work at Lake Tahoe. Finally, the package increases the amount of grant funding available that Basin partners can apply for," said Incident Commander of the Tahoe Fire & Fuels Team, Forest Schafer.

While the bulk of these funds are directed towards the state, cities will be eligible for several large pots of funding also for urban forestry, and wildfire prevention. Notable items for cities within this funding package are:

$342 million to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, including but not limited to:

- $123 million for fire prevention grants to reduce wildfire risk to homes and communities
- $10 million for urban forestry to provide grants to local governments to plant trees, improve the management of urban forests, and better utilize wood waste
- $2 million for defensive space inspectors in the State Responsibility Area lands to ensure that structures are in compliance with state defensible space requirements.
- $25 million for the California Office of Emergency Services for assisting low income and disadvantaged homeowners with home hardening programs.
- $16 million for the Climate Catalyst Revolving Loan Fund. Eligible uses for this fund include: providing loans, loan guarantees, and other credit support to encourage the development of businesses that utilize wood and forest biomass and encouraging private-sector innovations in technology, business models, infrastructure, and supply chains in woody biomass markets.
- $50 million to the Department of Conservation for the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity Program, which provides block grants to regional and statewide entities to engage with communities, develop project priority plans, prepare projects to be shovel-ready, and implement demonstration projects.

$20 million is headed to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and $1,000,000 to the California Tahoe Conservancy.

Not all parts of the bill address fire prevention though. It was written to amend the Budget Act of 2020 with adjustments to budgets of the Department of Social Services, State Department of Education, Department of Food and Agriculture and other.

For a full view of SB-85, visit https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB85.