BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) Burn scars near Caliente are underscoring a long-running debate in California over how to balance wildfire prevention with environmental protections, as a new bill seeks to speed up fuel-reduction work in high-risk areas.
Assembly Bill 2410 would allow for the quick removal of dead brush and trees to prevent wildfires by exempting critical fuel reduction projects from the requirement to procure a coastal development permit.
Assemblymember Stan Ellis, who proposed the legislation, said the bill grew from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s emergency proclamation.
“If you got a fuels fire hazard problem, you shouldn’t have to spend three years with CEQA to get a permit to go in and clear the brush,” Ellis said.
Ellis said that after Newsom’s proclamation temporarily suspended CEQA, “there’s been over like four hundred wildfire safety projects that were approved statewide within as much as thirty days.”
He also argued that back burns and controlled brush clearings are necessary.
“There’s no common sense to not having back burns and not having controlled brush clearings. We’ve lost our common sense. But yet they want to blame it on climate change. It’s not climate change,” Ellis said.
A California environmental group was contacted for comment on the bill, but no one was available.
AB 2410 is still moving through the legislative process.
If Newsom were to sign and approve the bill, the temporary exemption would remain in effect until Jan. 1, 2030.
The state Attorney General’s Office was also contacted about how the proposal might conflict with the California Environmental Quality Act, but there had been no response.