On Tuesday, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a historic $536 million spending plan for early action budget funding geared toward wildfire prevention, forest resilience, and fire suppression efforts to help protect residents statewide from impacts from catastrophic wildfire events. The spending package is the largest funding commitment the state has ever made to wildfire prevention and forest resilience programs, and comes in the wake of the most destructive wildfire season in California history in 2020.
The funds include $125 million in Greenhous Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) dollars to fulfill the Legislature’s second year of commitments under Senate Bill 901 (Dodd, 2018), which promised five consecutive years of $200 million annual appropriations from the GGRF for forest health programs. Funding in the plan includes:
- $155 million to CAL FIRE for state forest health programs;
- $123 million to CAL FIRE for local community fire prevention grants;
- $25 million to CAL FIRE and CalOES for programs to assist homeowners with fire prevention retrofits (home hardening);
- $2 million to CAL FIRE to fortify defensible space inspection activities;
- $20 million to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy to implement projects in high fire risk areas;
- $16 million for the Climate Catalyst Fund to help stimulate industries with low-interest finance for low carbon projects and programs such as woody biomass utilization or methane capture technologies;
- $3 million to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research to develop strategies to encourage the use and development of new wood products; and,
- $6 million to CAL FIRE and the Workforce Development Board to help develop the state’s forest health and wildfire prevention workforce.
The official announcement on the early action wildfire funding can be found on Governor Gavin Newsom’s website here.