RESOLUTION NO. _____________

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, COUNTY OF SAN MATEO, STATE OF CALIFORNIA

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RESOLUTION REQUESTING ACTION BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO ENSURE THAT THE UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE ADEQUATELY DOES THE PREVENTION AND MAINTENANCE WORK REQUIRED TO MITIGATE THE RISK OF CATASTROPHIC WILDFIRES.

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RESOLVED, by the Board of Supervisors of the County of San Mateo, State of California, that

WHEREAS, catastrophic wildfires continue to threaten lives, property and the natural resources of the state of California; and

WHEREAS, the insurance losses for the 2007 Fire Season in Southern California were $1.6 billion and the Angora Fire in the Tahoe basin was more than $150 million alone, insurers have paid out in excess of $8 billion to thousands of policy holders from the top 10 California wildfires since 1970; and

WHEREAS, the estimated loss of employment from the 2007 Southern California fires was in excess of $500 million; and

WHEREAS, California has over 43 million acres of federal land, much of which has not been adequately managed to mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfire; and

WHEREAS, two of the three largest wildfires in California in the past 100 years began on federally-owned land; and

WHEREAS, millions of dollars are spent each year fighting fires in our national forests; and

WHEREAS, the escalating costs of fighting fires on federal land over the last 10 years has significantly diminished the available resources for the critically needed prevention measures that can minimize these catastrophic fires; and

WHEREAS, the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Interior have spent over $1 billion on fire suppression every year since 2000 with suppression costs now consuming over 50% of the total wildland fire budget, as compared to 13% of the total fire budget in 1991, leaving few resources for critically needed preventive maintenance of our national forests in the west and throughout the country; and

WHEREAS, the resources to manage the federal lands to reduce fire risk would be a small investment relative to the skyrocketing costs of fire suppression; and

WHEREAS, the State of California has made significant strides towards reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires on state and private lands such as ranking lands as to the level of fire hazard, requiring 100 feet of defensible space around homes, requiring ignition-resistant materials on all new construction that is built in any Fire Hazard Severity Zone within State Responsibility Areas, any Local Agency Very-High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, or any designated Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fire Area, and many other things to not only address preservation of life and property but the environmental risks of large scale wildfire as well; and

WHEREAS, the increased risk of catastrophic wildfires in our State will result in harmful secondary environmental effects, including diminished air and water quality, impacted watershed, increased air pollutant emissions, and threatened habitats of sensitive wildlife species; and

WHEREAS, approximately eighty percent (80%) of the State’s developed surface water supply originates on watershed lands within our rural counties, where most of this federally owned land is located; and California’s residents use a portion of this water for domestic, commercial, agricultural, industrial, recreational, and other beneficial uses and these rivers, lakes, and watershed lands also serve as habitat for hundreds of species of fish and wildlife; and

WHEREAS, the detrimental effects on these watersheds affect all of California, not just rural California; and

WHEREAS, the increased risk of catastrophic wildfires significantly impacts the levels of greenhouse gases in San Mateo County; and

WHEREAS, the mitigation of wildfire emissions is vital to reach the goals stated in the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32); and

WHEREAS, the Draft AB 32 Scoping Plan, released in June 2008, fails to adequately address the need to mitigate wildfires and the importance of quantifying and modeling wildfire emissions on private, state, and federal lands;

WHEREAS, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors calls for immediate measures to be taken to prevent imminent catastrophic wildfires;

NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY DETERMINED AND ORDERED that the Board of Supervisors of the County of San Mateo declares that there is an ongoing emergency due to the threat of wildfire in California, that the state and the local governments have taken many steps to resolve this issues and now requests that the Governor take an active role at the federal level to demand that the United States Forest Service take an action in California’s federal wild and forest lands to do the prevention and maintenance work required to mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires.

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