CPUC Workshop - 2020-12-09
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California Public Utilities Commission
Follow its sittingsSpeaker 2
And can we get to the flag slide, Robert and Joe. No. Not that. It's kinda Okay. Here I go.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Now I'll turn the meeting over to Jamie Ormond for a safety moment. And next slide as well, please.
Speaker 5
Of course. Thank you. This is usually the time of the meeting when we go over the safety exits and locations of the bathrooms. Instead, let's please take a moment to look around our current locations and consider our safety options. We have been doing our best to make these virtual board meetings as accessible as possible.
So all of the information about this meeting can be found on the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board website, cpuc.ca.gov/wsab. Links to all the documents that we'll be discussing today can be found there. And these documents include the minutes from the September, the agenda for today, the guidance advisory opinion and the slide deck that is running during this meeting. Thank you for taking this brief moment with me. Please stay safe out there.
I'd like to turn the meeting back to Chair Efforts.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Jamie. Let's quickly go over the meeting agenda. In short order, we're going to begin today's meeting with public comment. After public comment, we will be discussing and adopting the minutes from the September 23 Board meeting. Following that, we have presentations from Cal OES, Wildfire Safety Division and Cal Fire.
After these presentations, we'll take a short stretch break. After the break, we'll continue discussion with municipal and cooperative utility associations about the twenty twenty one publicly owned utility wildfire mitigation plan filings. Following that, we will discuss the Board's guidance advisory opinion on those plans. And if appropriate, the Board may vote today on that. After that, we will open the phone lines for a final round of public comment, and then hopefully, we will be to adjournment at the appropriate time.
Very quickly, want to see if any of the Board members have any opening statements they'd like to make before we begin. That's a no, no. All right.
Speaker 3
to open up the telephone lines, move into our first opportunity for public comments. Okay. Starting with public comments. As stated, if you'd like to participate in today's public comment, phone number is 5017, passcode Seventeen-sixty7567. Operator, is this line open?
Speaker 3
Thank you. Then let's get started. First, let's check the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board email. Catherine, do we have any email communication?
Speaker 2
Yes. Thanks. We have one moment from Sue one email from Susan Friend. Thank you for your time. Please stop doing the PSPS.
Shutting off power does not decrease our chances of losing our homes by wildfire. When the power is off, you endanger us more. One, we have no power for our water wells and pumps, and therefore, no water pressure. Without water water pressure, we cannot fight fires. Two, we have no electricity to keep the lights on so firefighters can see our homes and structures.
Lighting is critical in a fire as the smoke hides structures. Three, we have no Internet or phone as the carriers on the same grid, and they do not work. Four, we cannot call 911 as we have no phone service. Five, we cannot stay informed about fires and or evacuations. Six, you are stopping school.
We need Internet to have students go to school. Children are missing more school now because of PSDS than they ever did when they were when they physically went to school. Seven, we stay at home with stay at home orders and people working remotely, you impede our opportunity to work and earn an income. Thank you, Susan. And, Marcy, I can follow-up with Susan and see what utility she's with and see if we can help her in any way.
Speaker 3
You could provide her the information on the determining group on public safety power shutoffs. That'd be useful, I'm sure, for her.
Speaker 2
Nope. I just one member of Acting Town Council, and I'll send them an email back to get online. All right. I'd like to
Speaker 3
check with our phone operator. Do we have any public comment on the phone line?
Speaker 3
Once again, there will be another opportunity for public comment near the end of the meeting. I'd like to thank you for the comments and we have close the public comment period.
Speaker 3
All right. Then I am going to rescind the closure of public comments because it is very critical that we do hear from the public, and we're going to fall back and go ahead and initiate the queue, operator.
Speaker 3
Good afternoon. Thank you. I am a neighbor of Susan Friends. Our company is Edison, Southern California Edison, and she's addressed a lot of the issues. However, so I would like to also address the fact of the notifications and the lack of communication that goes out when they shut us down or when they're going to start them up.
We're also some of us in this community do large animal evacuations, and without the use of or the ability to have our cell phones and Texas capability and Internet, we are unable to assist in evacuations or get help from the surrounding areas for evacuations. And that's all I have to say for now.
Speaker 1
Yes, ma'am. I have two more. The next comes from Bill Slocum. Your line is open.
Speaker 6
Hello. I am Bill Slocum. I'm the President of the Cagle Canyon Civic Association. I too am neighbors with Marlene Raider and with Susan Friend. I just wanted to chime in and share.
Our community, power goes down, Internet service goes down, communications are stopped. Two years ago or three years ago, we had a fire in our area. My home literally was surrounded three sixty by fire. And the only reason I'm here today is I had water coming from my well. I stood there with for four and a half hours with a garden hose just watering down embers, not flames.
I couldn't stop flames, but the fire department could not come in. And these shutoffs by Southern California Edison are deadly to people. We had 16 homes lost in our area And the prevention of saving homes by saying you've shut off power and you're going to save homes, you don't. You put them in more danger. Sorry for my emotions.
It just brought back a memory that is very dramatic. I want people to understand that I believe they're not doing this out of the benefit of the people, and I think that they're doing it out of the benefit of the shareholders who have stock in their company, and they are afraid of lawsuits. If they enhance their equipment and their lines are put underground or whatever they can do technologically to enhance their system, we would all be better off. We need our services, and we need your help in making sure that these services are provided to us since the State of California decided to deregulate and allow these things to go public. Thank you.
Speaker 8
Okay. Yes, I've lived in The Canyon for over forty years. I'm 73 years old. In 2002, my house burned down to the ground.
Speaker 9
Place of either shutting off the power or potentially endangering us and either way there's a burden that comes along with it. There are many, many people right now that are getting generators. It's still a difficult task, especially in rural communities to access battery backup systems for solar panels. And I know that a lot of those funds from what I'm being told from energy consultants that I've been having conversations with who are connected with RCRC, that a lot of the money that the government had set aside for battery backup went to secondary homes in more affluent areas rather than the areas where wildfires actually happen. This is unfortunate because generators can be a dangerous thing if people are not actually going through the right process to connect them or don't know how to handle them.
And generators are not meant to be running for forty eight hours straight or longer sometimes, depending on what the PSPS is. I know here in Lake County, our sewer system almost had a very bad situation where our pumps almost lost their generators, and that would have been a very bad situation to happen to us. Luckily, that's not the case. We were able to save that. On the other side, we have the cleanest air almost in the entire U.
S. Right here in Lake County, and now it sounds like helicopter during PSPS, and you can start to see and smell the fumes from generators as well. And so we're asking people to go against what even the state of California is pushing for, which is cleaner air and watching our carbon footprint. And in fact, we're doing the complete opposite, especially during those times of PSPS. Water pumps.
Water pumps is a huge issue in rural areas. Power going down in a more suburban area is a vastly different situation than in a rural area where we need a water pump to be able to have water flow through our households. This is actually the case in my house. I have zero water when we have a PSPS, and when a PSPS lasts as long as four or five days as it did last year, luckily that's not happened this year, that becomes a very difficult task. And water is an essential human right.
And I think that we need to be aware. And PG and E, and I speak of PG and E since that's the company I deal with, but the electric company should be aware of where water pumps are. And at this moment in time, it is not factored in their PSPS decisions. Community resource centers. Right now, we just had a PSPS.
Luckily, we escaped this one, but just occurring over the weekend, it is cold. And without electricity, we are asking people to remain in a household that is very cold. It's below thirty at night here, and community resource centers are only open typically from 8AM to 5PM or sometimes different hours, but never overnight. And so what are we doing ensure that in these circumstances, in these extreme temperatures, that we're actually providing some level of comfort during these times where the decision was made to cut off the ability to stay warm. Not everybody has a chimney and not able to warm up through other means than just a heater.
The economy of our rural areas and impact from COVID nineteen, I wish that we could have made a decision that due to COVID nineteen, we're just not going to go through PSPS this year. Yes, it might be a risk, but it just seems that we are only making our economic environment that much less predictable and that much more unstable, and I worry about that, especially when rural economies are already on a fine line. And so that makes it that much more difficult. Here's the difficult part for me is undergrounding the wires is the best way to go to help save some of our community growth boundaries, and forest management is the key to reduce and mitigate the potential for wildfires. The process to make those things happen are way too long.
I'm working right now with Bureau of Land Management and Cal Fire to do a control burn in an area just east of the city of Clear Lake. They have been working on their NEPA application for the past five years. It can't take that long. We have to reduce the time frame that it takes to be able to get these things approved. The money, yes, the money needs to be there, but the process, the bureaucratic process we have to go through needs to be removed and minimized as much as possible.
That is what is holding us back more than anything else. Again, thank you very much for the time to make my comment. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3
Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm going to use the prerogative of the chair and take a step backward in terms of accepting statements from the Board. We're not specifically addressing any particular public comment, but I think a few words of clarification are in order. You will find a very specific audience within this particular group.
We were created by statute to provide advice to the wildfire safety division as well as direct advice to the publicly owned community on their wildfire mitigation plans. It is obviously critical that the investments be made, that the focus be made in these particular areas to manage some of the instances that you've very recently heard about. So it is certainly in our interest to minimize and ultimately eliminate public safety power shut ups. And while we are not in control of that decision, we are very supportive and understand the implications. And with that, I want to offer my colleagues, if any of them have some brief comments they'd like to make.
Mr. Mader, I thought I saw your hand go up. Do you have something you'd like to say?
Speaker 10
Yes. Thank you, Chair Edwards. I was just trying to make sure my mute button was off. And instead of responding to one particular speaker, I think I would like to respond to the group of concerns that were raised because there was a certain theme through these, which is the impact of the public safety power shutdown. This Board, of which I'm honored to be a member, has made a number of recommendations, as Chair Edwards points out, to advise on the formulation of the wildfire mitigation plans of the investor owned utilities, and now we're talking about the publicly owned utilities.
And our focus really is on two things, which is the avoidance utility initiated wildfires and trying to advise the utilities on how to minimize those risks. But also, we have identified that the the PSPS events themselves are an undesirable event. They are not a true solution. They have their own consequences, of which the speakers very eloquently enumerated their personal impact and the impacts to their communities. We recognize those impacts, and that is why we've made a number of recommendations and we'll continue to do that in order to reduce the impact of PSPSs if they are necessary to those that are affected, the amount of time or even because of a number of recommendations we've made, how to avoid them.
We earlier made a recommendation, it's called about the SUR, which is the system hardening utility. Basically, it's a standard to manage hardening in order to lower risk to be able to operate the system when normally when it would be subject to a PSDS. So we're trying to make a number of different efforts to address that. We are an advisory board. We do not actually operate the utilities.
Those decisions are made by the utilities themselves. But we are trying to enable those utilities to be able to avoid the impact as much as possible. I know that all of my colleagues very, very take that charge very seriously in the work that we're trying to do. So thank you for your sharing the impact to yourselves and to your communities, and we will continue to work on these issues. Thank you.
Speaker 11
Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Great. Okay. Just I was actually glad to be coming right after Board Member Nader.
Just a follow-up and support what he was just saying, wanted to say that we hear you. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story and your struggles. And it's a tough on this in this sort of remote environment for us not to see your faces and for us not to be face to face to recognize your concern in person. So I just wanted to let you know that we hear you and we appreciate your comment and to further support what Board Member Nader said. We're working on ways to provide recommendations on data driven solutions so that there are the cost benefit analysis is done in more sophisticated ways through the future.
So we're keeping all of this in mind and doing our best to put our heads together to find solutions.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Board Member Block. Seeing no other requests from the Board, that's going to conclude the portion where the Board has an opportunity for comments at this time. We're also going to close the public comment period, and we are going to open the topic of the September 23 meeting minutes. Let's see. Obviously, the minutes can be the draft minutes can be found on the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board website.
I'm sure that the members of the Board have had an opportunity to read them. Are there any edits or additions that you'd like to make to the meeting minutes?
Speaker 3
Motion carries. Thank you for that vote. Next, we are very grateful to the next run of presenters. We're honored we're joined by Cal OES, Wildfire Safety Division and Cal Fire to discuss the lay of the land, not only this past year, but perhaps get a glimpse looking forward. First, I'd like to introduce as well as thank Michael Massoni, the Assistant Director for Response Operations at Cal OES to speak with us.
Welcome, Michael. Is your mic working?
Speaker 16
Hi, good afternoon. My name is Mike Missoni. I'm Assistant Director for Cal OES. I want to say thank you to Madam Chair and the Honorable Board for having me today. It's an honor and privilege to be here.
I've put together a slide deck that we can go over and discuss kind of a small snippet perspective of our 2020 wildfire season to date. As we all know, it's a challenging season with just wildfire alone, it would have been an incredibly difficult season compound that by our obviously with COVID. But then throughout the season, we had some civil unrest, we had elections, we've had any number of other events that we've been managing here at the State Operations Center. But as it relates to wildfire, I do have my slide deck up, just a quick shot of our fire apparatus that we maintain and an overview of those apparatuses are staffed by the men and women across the state on resources that are provided by Cal OES Fire and Rescue and then staffed by individual cities and counties. With that, I'll start my presentation on wildfire.
Next slide. As it relates to the State Operations Center, working with our State agencies and partners including CAL FIRE, Department of Social Services, the Red Cross and others, we are the clearinghouse for all things emergency in the State. So our State Operations Center is responsible for wildfires as well or at least assistance in managing those and we're going to hear from CAL FIRE in a minute to give their perspective from CAL FIRE side. But CAL OES, this year in the state operations center, we're looking at 4.177856 estimated acres burned to date. We still have a few active fires, albeit somewhat contained in our southern part of the state.
Are that's what we're tracking this year. And I mean that's just an astronomical number. I'm sure Cal Fire is going to reflect in more detail on that, but just 4,000,000 acres in single year, we don't even call it a season anymore, but a single year is just an astronomical number. Of those, the State Operations Center was assisted in managing 30 of those 30 incidents and those are just the highlights. Those are the ones in of themselves, each one would have been a major emergency or a major conflagration or fire in the state.
And this year we had 30 of those and I'm sure CAL FIRE will reflect on those as well. But at one point we had 28 wildfires burning across the state that were in of themselves, each one would have been of such enormous magnitude that they were overwhelming. However, we manage those efficiently and with great success obviously with our state partners, our federal partners and we actually had wildfires come firefighters come from Israel this year to help us out and multiple firefighters from almost every state as well providing assistance to us. Sadly, this year with our law enforcement branch and we sustained thirty one fatalities that were reported to us through our law enforcement branch on those fires. And again, sadly, one is too many, thirty one is just unconscionable.
This year, structures damaged and destroyed, we track them by damaged and destroyed. There are other metrics out there, but 11,005 structures damaged and destroyed from these incidents across the state costing just over $2,050,000,000 in costs. I'll talk a little bit about costs in a minute, but just to let that sink in just again another incredible number. And this is just wildfires. This isn't the other incidents that we've assisted or managed across the state including COVID.
On our next slide, our Fire Management Assistant Grants or FMGs, 19 FMGs. I didn't check to see whether that's a record, but I can assure you that that's out there. And these Management Assistant Grants are the ones that are put in from our operational areas or counties for assistance, federal assistance on these fires. Thanks to our FEMA cooperators and partners, we were granted those grants relatively quickly and easily. When those are sent to us, we get on them right away.
Sometimes in the middle of the night, we hold meetings to discuss them to see whether we put them forward and then we get them to our FEMA partners as fast as possible to get those back to us. And out of those 19 FMGs, we assisted 25 counties with those. So 25 of our 58 counties are currently receiving FMAC assistance and that everything from direct assistance directly to individuals, housing cleanup, everywhere in between us and also for the fires. We have two major declarations, presidential declarations of disasters. Again, one is typically a heavy lift and a huge challenge.
We are actually supporting two right now through our joint field office that we've established with FEMA and Cal OES. And out of that, those two declarations, we've got 28 counties that are receiving direct benefit from that and one tribe. So again, it's just it can't be underscored what the challenge 2020 has been in terms of wildfires and what we've seen to date. And again, declarations are still ongoing each and every day. We're coordinating amongst all of our cooperators, state agencies and partners to make sure that ultimately the citizens and the counties are receiving the to the max extent possible aid and assistance.
Next slide is our state operations center. As I mentioned earlier, we kind of consolidate and coordinate all emergencies throughout the state. This year to date, we're tracking 80 significant events that are kind of relative to this body, 30 of those being those major wildland fires and then 50 of the public safety power shutoffs. And I want to thank not only this Board, but the CPUC and the Wildfire Safety Division on our cooperation and coordination amongst these power safety shutoffs. And to the Board and to the public, know that we take this very seriously.
The Governor, our Director, as well as all of Cal OES is intimately involved and we hear and understand the issues that are surrounding the public safety power shutoff. So we echo the comments earlier from the Board member that we too would like to see these end. As it relates to our state operations center, currently we have 800 staff that are currently activated in support of our state operations center and that's statewide. That's everywhere from our federal medical facilities, our acute care facilities that we're managing the COVID incident with to our joint field office, all the way down to folks in the field actually doing inspections to make sure that actions are being completed in terms of wildfire recovery and making sure that needs are being met. Kind of a unique number is the next one that each day I come in, still resonates.
It's two eighty four days of solid activation, meaning the state operations center that's just out to my right here has been activated with people in it for two eighty four days, which I'll just let that one sink in as well, which equates to 78% of this year to date with no end in sight of us deactivating or shutting down the SOC. We're just ramped up really heavy for COVID and the surge that's ongoing right now. But again, we set a record in 2017 and we've surpassed that by one hundred and sixty seven days to date. And like I said, we're probably going to continue on into 2021 with that as well. Next is our OES urban search and rescue, CAL FIRE I'm sorry, CAL OES fire and rescue also manages our OES urban search and rescue program.
And one of our unique deployments this year was we deployed four task forces over ten days to the North Complex in Butte to do remains recovery and search of over 2,500 burn structures in that area. That was basically an incident within an incident. We operated under the incident command system of that fire and we built out an urban search and rescue component within that where we cast four task forces from four different locations within the state. We brought them all to Butte for that ten day operation. So again, just again, more outside the box thinking and really throwing every resource that we have at these.
And at the end of the day, our ultimate goal was to provide some closure for families, make sure that we accounted for all of the missing and that we can ensure that the structures were searched and that there were no more lost or missing. So again, just another resource that we provided on some of the fires. We also do what's called pre positioning. We've done that with our fire apparatus where we've moved for wind events. We have strategically located and stood up or staffed fire apparatus throughout the state during these PSPS and the wind and the red flag warnings both in the North and the South.
This year because of the large areas of burn scars and the potential for debris flow. And if you remember Montecito, that's what we were guarding against and prepositioning our urban search and rescue teams in those areas. Thankfully, luckily, we did not see that and we were able to pull back our resources. But again, we stand on the ready as we move into the rainy season should that ever come. I know that we're still in red flag and no immediate relief for our rainfall, but we're certainly hoping as are the rest of you I'm sure.
Lastly, I'll just close with our law branch. This is just kind of a broad picture of them. We also coordinate law enforcement mutual aid and with our law enforcement mutual aid system, we manage all of our evacuation and coordinate evacuations of all of the various individuals throughout and coordinate them into our shelters, which we partnered with CDSS and American Red Cross. This year, our sheltering program was a little bit different due to COVID. We weren't able to put them in the typical congregate shelters or the large arenas, gymnasiums and those sorts of things where we typically set out tents and cots and direct them all to one area.
What we did this year was we provided hotel rooms and hotel vouchers to all of the evacuees. And again, just managing that and keeping track of the evacuees, making sure that their needs are met and making sure that we know where they are within a defined area was a challenge as well. And then obviously, saw a lot of the air rescues through our National Guard folks that flew some credible air missions this year, pulling out people out of these fire zones, just incredibly heroic. Our law enforcement branch coordinated those with our partners at California Military Department and California National Guard. With that, I'm going to end.
I'm available for questions either now or I'll remain on the line and available for questions. So thank you all for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Mr. Roussini. I know I speak for all of us when I share with you how proud we are of the work that Cal OES is doing. At this point, I'd like to see if any of my colleagues have questions. Vice Chair Fehlman.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Massoni, for your presentation and your support for the state. The question I have goes to the one that was raised in the public comments. At our meeting today, we're addressing the publicly owned utilities and electric cooperatives.
And with respect to coordinating with communities, is your general line of communication to the jurisdictional entities like the cities and counties? Or do you have a separate line of communication to the publicly owned utilities? Because I imagine you're already dealing directly with the IOUs. So this focus is on the POUs.
Speaker 16
Yes. The answer to both is yes. We have communication with the POUs. And then as it relates to the communities and the counties, we use our geographic mutual aid regions to coordinate between the counties and Cal OES. So each geographic mutual aid region has emergency service coordinators assigned to each county and they work with the counties and the agencies to make sure that the needs are being met and that any of the information is sent back to either the State Operations Center, Cal OES or questions are answered from the communities and the counties.
Speaker 13
And just as a follow-up, is there any pre fire season outreach or is it mostly in real time?
Speaker 13
In terms of well, not in terms of PSPS, but do you establish communication and have information forums prior to the fire season or is it merely during is it solely during the fire season and in real time?
Speaker 16
Yes. Again, the answer is both. But no, we do have ongoing we're in constant contact with our counties, our office our County Office of Emergency Services and all of our community based organizations that are within those operational areas or counties to make sure that needs are being met. And it's the pre events. And then we do have in real time communications either through emergency operation centers then communicate back to our state operation center or just directly in the field.
Speaker 3
Thank you. I'm seeing no other questions from the board members at this time. I'd again like to thank you Mr. Kansoni for being here with us today. With that, we're going to move to the Wildfire Safety Division.
Director Thomas Jacobs is with us. It's been quite a wild year for her, no doubt. We appreciate you joining us today. And with that, Director.
Speaker 7
Great. Thank you, Chair Edwards, good afternoon, Board members. Thank you for the opportunity to brief you on the Wildfire Safety Division's progress we've made in 2020. Before I get into my official remarks, just want to take a moment to offer my personal thanks to Mike Massoni, who just was presenting for all the work that he's been doing in the meeting at Cal OES. Just given my background there myself, I have a deep understanding of the enormity and the complexity of what this year has been for the state's response.
Deep appreciation for all the time and energy you've put into that Mike. So, thank you very much. So, when I first briefed this body back in the beginning of the year, I laid out objectives for the division in 2020 as a new division established in just this January. Build our division, meet our statutory responsibilities, and prepare for our transition into the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety by July 2021. We've executed on all three.
A quick recap of building out the division, and then I'll provide more detail on our core responsibilities. To date, we've hired the vast majority of our team. We have a few remaining positions that we're expecting to fill soon. Throughout the year, we've executed on our various responsibilities. While we've executed on our various responsibilities, we've built out our internal procedures and protocols, we've equipped our team, and we've developed a training program to ensure that as we quickly onboard staff, they can hit the ground running.
So while we've built the proverbial plane around us, we have been running full steam ahead tackling our specific statutory responsibilities. Key among them this year: first, evaluating the 2020 wildfire mitigation plans, which was the first iteration of the plan that covers a three year period per the new AB ten fifty four requirements. We completed a comprehensive review of the eight submissions back in May and are in the process of finalizing our review of Bear Valley Electric's refiled WMP this fall. The majority of the utilities received conditional approvals of their plans, requiring them to submit remedial compliance plans in July to address Class A or the most substantial deficiencies and submit a quarterly report in September to address the Class B deficiencies or the moderate deficiencies. We're in the process of finalizing our assessments of those submissions and will be issuing our findings shortly.
Throughout the year, we've been reviewing for issuance subsequent safety certifications. We've reissued a reissuance of Bear Valley's electric safety certification after a corporate restructure back in August, and then we issued subsequent certifications for Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric in September. We currently have before us under consideration PG and E's safety certification. We initiated development of our overall wildfire safety compliance program, and to date our inspectors have completed over 2,700 activities, identifying 160 defects, and we are actively working with the utilities to ensure that they resolve them in a timely manner. And in October, we submitted our inaugural recommendations to the Commission on the four required elements per Public Utilities Code 8389D, specifically the updated wildfire mitigation plan requirements, updated performance metrics, an inaugural annual safety culture assessment, and the inaugural compliance process.
I'll provide some details on those recommendations in a moment. But as you all are of course aware, we built our recommendations off of the recommendations provided by this board, so I'd like to provide a bit more detail in those recommendations. We submitted our recommendations to the Commission via two resolutions, WSD011 and WSD012. Both were informed by the recommendations that we received from the Board in June. The Division considered the Board's 23 recommendations and prioritized 16 for incorporation into the resolutions and its attachments.
The 16 incorporated broadly focus on the following areas. First, further clarifying and standardizing metrics, such as clearly defining all risk events that could cause an ignition. Second, requiring additional reporting requirements in the wildfire mitigation plan, such as worker qualifications and providing a risk analysis on each initiative. And third, reshaping the wildfire mitigation plan process and timeline to enable more complete plans and time for evaluation. There were seven recommendations that while we appreciated the thoughtful analysis and recommendation from the board, we did not incorporate at this time.
Most of these were not incorporated because they either were outside the scope of the division specific authorities and responsibility and best handled in other parts of the Commission or are prioritized as part of a longer term effort following the 2021 wildfire mitigation plan cycle. For example, solving the utilities resource constraints, which is a longer term issue that the division supports, but is outside of our direct scope. And then adopting a comprehensive risk metric that Board Member Mader mentioned earlier, which is best addressed within the context of the Commission's ongoing risk focused proceedings such as the RANT proceedings. Our full analysis of the Board's recommendations can be found in attachment one to Resolution WSD 11, which can be found on our website. Our changes to the wildfire mitigation guidelines were relatively light and therefore ensure comparability over the prior year submissions.
The changes focus on clarifying definitions, the maturity model capabilities and metrics, while keeping requirements consistent with the 2020 guidelines to allow year over year progress tracking. Standardizing quantitative data and adding structure to narrative responses and reorganizing the requirements to streamline both the utility submissions and the division's review process. For example, creating a new section where all information related to public safety power shutoff will be housed as opposed to that information being throughout the utility's WMP as was the case in 2020. Our changes to the wildfire mitigation plan process are also relatively light and focus on making the wildfire mitigation plan review schedule more efficient and feasible for everyone involved going forward. The adopted process includes the following core elements.
First, we offset the small and multi jurisdictional utilities and independent transmission owner submissions to thirty days after the February 5 large utility submission date. This gives the WSD, the division, a dedicated month to focus on reviewing the large IOU plans and provides additional time for smaller utilities to prepare their plans. Second, we moved quantitative WMP requirements into new quarterly reports. This will enable the division to receive the data more frequently and conduct analyses and assess progress year round. Regarding the safety culture assessment or CSA, there are a few things I'd like to highlight about the process.
First, the division's safety culture assessment will be distinct from the Commission's broader safety culture assessment in two ways. One, the division's safety culture assessment must be conducted annually in contrast to the Commission's assessment, which must be conducted at least every five years. Second, the Division's Safety Culture Assessment will be focused primarily on wildfire safety, while of course still incorporating covering some of the elements of broader safety culture, which are essential to wildfire safety outcomes. Second, the division's safety culture assessment by nature being conducted annually aims to measure improvement of safety culture over time in a consistent fashion and accordingly drive accountability. Key to this is having a standard assessment tools which can be applied across electrical corporations year over year.
Third, the division will base its assessment on five forms of data surveys, self assessments, interviews, observations, and supporting documentation. We might phase these in over initial years and will likely streamline the process for smaller electrical corporations. With the Commission's adoption of WSD 11 at their November 19 voting meeting, The WSD is moving forward to implement all of these recommendations. We have recently released detailed CSA requirements for stakeholder feedback and plan to conduct our first safety culture assessment next year. As per Resolution WSD012, our new annual compliance process, it articulates a two part compliance process: ongoing and annual compliance assessments in which the WSD determines each utility's compliance throughout a compliance period and then conducts an annual review at the end of each compliance period and consequences of compliance assessments in which the WSD will work with utilities to minimize and or resolve wildfire safety issues and non compliance with the WMP initiative.
The ongoing compliance assessments through field inspections and regular audits of Electrical Corporation compliance with initiatives is a core part of our strategy. The field inspections provide near real time notification and expedited resolution of Electrical Corporation's defects and provide transparency into the progress towards risk reduction goals. Regular audits allow the WSD staff to expeditiously address WSD compliance concerns not easily addressed through the field inspection. A key element of the new process is expedited timeline to resolve defects. All WNP defects will be categorized by severity using the same definitions and thresholds as the GO95 Rule 18, but will have shortened timelines to ensure expeditious remediation.
The new timelines are as follows: severe defects will remain immediate or need to be temporarily repaired to lower risk levels moderate defects within Tier three high fire threat districts the resolution timeline will shorten from six months to one to two months. Moderate defects in Tier two areas will shorten from twelve months to three to six months. And moderate worker safety defects will shorten from twelve months to six months. Other moderate defects will shorten from thirty six months to twelve months, and then minor defects will shorten from sixty months down to twelve months. With the Commission's adoption of WSD012 at the November 19 meeting, the WSD is moving forward to develop operational compliance protocols.
These draft protocols will be circulated for stakeholder comments soon. Lastly, let me address our planned transition next year into the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety. Everything we have developed as a division has been developed with an eye towards how we would transfer it to OEIS. Where we can, we simply will move the capability with us. For example, all WSD staff will transfer to OEIS.
We will bring our computers, our phones, our procedures. Where we can't take it with us, we are actively working with CNRA to identify replacement capabilities to meet our needs. For example, we will be creating new OEIS IT systems and accounts. All staff will get new OEIS emails. We'll have a new OEIS website under the CNRA.
And lastly, there are some processes and tools that WSD is using that are distinct to the PUC. Where we use something that doesn't have an equivalent over at CNRA, we will innovate and create new capabilities designed to meet OEIS's specific needs and mission. For example, we are working with the Office of Administrative Law to identify any necessary OEIS rules that need to be worked through the rulemaking process. There is an unbelievable amount of detail behind each of these transition tasks that I won't bore you with here, but suffice it to say we are on track to successfully transition by July 1. So with that, I thank you again for the opportunity to brief you and welcome any questions you may have.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Director. We appreciate your presentation and the time you took to be here today. I do have one question and it may be overly simplistic, but how do you relate the activities that you undertake in the wildfire safety division? Do you have any way of correlating its impact on public safety power shutoffs? I mean, know
Speaker 3
of this is to reduce it, but is there any quantification we can use? Thank you.
Speaker 7
Yes. So that goes to the performance metrics. So last year was the first year that we sort of introduced a number of performance metrics that we required the utilities to submit to give us both historical data, for example, how many emissions they've had, how many PSP events have they had, and then they have to articulate how the different wildfire mitigation plans or initiatives are driving a reduction in those performance metrics over time. So, what we've done is in the submission for twenty twenty one is we've continued to refine those performance metrics. And with a goal towards showing how the activities that they're doing, the Lockhart mitigation activities they're doing, which PSPS is one of those mitigation activities.
But as is clearly stated by the commission and reiterated a number of times should and only be used as a mitigation of last resort, right? It should only be the very last thing they decide to use. But how all of those different mitigation initiatives are actually driving a reduction in the risk of wildfire and or the consequences of wildfire risk.
Speaker 3
That's good to know. Do I have any questions from the balance of the board? Thank you, Director. Again, we very much appreciate it. Thank you.
All right.
Speaker 3
CAL FIRE. I'm pleased to introduce Eric Puckett, the CAL FIRE Division Chief in charge of Utility Fire Mitigation. And thank you too, Eric, for taking the time out of your day. Please go ahead.
Speaker 4
Thank you, Chair Edwards. It's a pleasure to be here, and it's nice actually getting to hear some of the public comments that came in. So my name is Eric Bucket. I am an Assistant Chief in the Utility Fire Mitigation. I work closely with the WSD and Caroline's team.
So I can I do have a very good understanding of the PSPF comments that have been made? I can assure you that we are collaboratively working on resolutions. So I hope to provide you a little bit of insight into what I look at viruses in 2020. There are a few important components. If we could get next slide please.
One more. Thank you. Okay. So just a few things, weather outlooks. We're going to see how the season started and where we think it's going to go based on fuel and forecast.
Can you talk about the efforts of Cal Fire's fuel reductions? You're going to see the impact of COVID-nineteen. Can you talk about some growth we had even during this climate, this fiscal climate that we're dealing with? Some stats that will be in line with Chief Masoni's records and then our new Cal Firehawk platform. So next slide please.
So we're just going to kind of start here, significant fire potential. Essentially, there's three slides and our forecasters monthly do a four month outlook. And so this is we're going to go back to June. So this was posted in June. So the first slide is essentially June and what you see is a map of I just displayed Northern California and anything that's read is significant fire potential.
So in the month of June, they identified that we had significant fire potential. And we actually did have a large incident in Santa Clara that was tied into essentially this timeline. And they get into July and August and it kind of moves around a little bit and then September where the entire North State is essentially in a red, which indicates significant fire potential. So a couple of key things going into this season. Most areas were 25% to 70% below average rainfall and this snowpack almost completely melted off weeks ahead of the usual.
So on top of that, we had they anticipated North Northeast offshore winds will pose a bigger threat of large fires in June, September. So their forecast was almost spot on. A started to significant lightning storm and as predicted the trend. So we're going to get into the fire siege here in just a bit. So going into from this point forward, our focus right now as far as weather patterns is we're looking at next slide please.
I'm sorry, I'll let you know sooner. We're looking at South Ops, four months significant fire potential. So the left slide is December. You can kind of see right down there along the coastline is red. And then the picture to the right is three months, January, February, March, very normal.
But what we'd like to see is below normal. That indicates that there's some moisture that the fuels are reacting. So what's key here is that they forecasted above normal offshore wind events in December than normal near normal offshore wind events from January through March. So we are seeing that currently. So we've had a series of offshore events stack up and continue to hit Southern California and we're currently in the tail end of an offshore event and it's very likely this weekend we may see an onshore event that could be as or near significant as the events that we've seen.
Next slide please. So this is just a little bit of supporting evidence. The top left there, you're looking at the state, the drought index. So you can see almost the entire state is in some form of a drought other than that Southwest Corner, maybe San Diego. Percentage of average precip, way below normal.
So we're looking at August 1 through November 30, and much the state is in red, which is indicating they were way below average. Now we're going to look at more of the potentials here. So bottom left, December, it's sure looking like the temperatures are going to be above normal and below normal precipitation. January, very similar. February, kind of migrates a little bit, but half the state is looking warmer than normal.
And then it's still pretty dry in the Southern region. March, it looks like maybe a little bit of trend of moisture in the North region. And in the South, not so much. So this is just an indication December 20 through March 21 that in the North, this is just essentially a normal significant large growth prediction. Next slide please.
So, CAL FIRE has made tremendous efforts and we have very specific goals directed by Chief Porter. So this is statewide. So within the fiscal year, our goal is to burn broadcast burn 30,000 acres, complete 20,000 acres of fuel treatment and complete 250,000 of defensible space inspections. Next slide. So I think the takeaway here guys is that the real number is when you look at what we've done compared to our goals, our broadcast goals were 30,000 and we've completed just under 3,000.
So we're looking at 10%. Our combined fuel reduction treated acres 2,900, so 14%. So the takeaway is that this has been an extremely busy fire season. All of our staff have been fully engaged and we typically gain the most numbers on our fuel reduction in late fall and in early spring. So these aren't alarming numbers because we still have a lot of time to meet those goals.
Next slide. So this one really just focuses on our efforts for defensible space inspections. And so each inspection really includes a habitable residence. So what our department does essentially is updates as they go along inspecting and you can see what units are producing the numbers. Total, our goal is 250,000 and we are sitting at 104,000, so 41.
So again, not alarming, but just a good stat to understand our efforts. Next slide. So COVID, when we first got impacted by it, it was in March, our department developed an incident action plan and the whole goal was to really to reduce exposures to keep the workforce working. So there was a lot of work put together by this incident action plan, strict guidance, strict reporting requirements. I think overall, our department did very well with reducing the impact on our personnel.
So if you go down this list, May and June, a few cases, July spiked a little bit, then August and September really dropped. The takeaway here is that the August, September, so the lightning siege came in August 16 and lasted approximately six weeks. Those were the two busiest months. They're very the cases are very low. So the mitigation efforts that our incident management teams and the units were actually processing worked.
Next slide, please. So this is just an indication of we still use the term fire season is used widely, but we use winter and summer preparedness. And when we're talking summer preparedness, we talk peak and off peak. So this is a representation of peak summer preparedness when we have all of our resources staffed on a daily basis. So we're going into peak preparedness with three fifty six fire engines, 196 hand crews, 58 bulldozers, 23 air tankers, 12 helicopters, 12 air attacks and six incident management teams.
So these incident management teams are all risk and they respond within California to essentially any type of emergency. So a good example of that is IMT4 was activated for COVID. I think it was March or maybe February or March there. Next slide please. So again, those IMTs are not just for wildland fires.
So what's been going on really it's been happening since 2012 is we have a declining number of low risk offenders in our camp and correctional facilities. So over the last three or four years, we've essentially declined our Type one fire crews. So in October and December, at CAL FIRE and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced that we would be closing eight conservation camps. And those camps are located Timberland Creek in Mendocino County, Devil's Garden in Modoc County, High Rock Conservation Camp in Humble and Valley View Conservation Camp in Glynn. In the southern region, you got Baseline Camp in Tuolumne, McCain Valley, San Diego, Pilot Rock, San Bernardino and Rainbow Conservation Camp in San Diego.
So I highlighted that 196 number. So now we're officially down to 152 with those camp closures. In addition to that, while COVID-nineteen pandemic led to an increase of low risk potential inmate firefighters being released, it does not alone account for the dramatic drop. So we've had to come up with some mitigation for the low crew counts. Next slide please.
So some of the things we used, so the California National Guard crews were engaged. They were engaged in both of our fuel projects, and those were the governor's 35 fuel projects, and then they were engaged in fire suppression. We increased our dozer staffing in the unit, so bulldozer staff 20 a week. We engaged our CAL FIRE fuel reduction crews, but typically their purpose is focusing on fuel reduction. They were engaged with fire line assignments, increased in the CCC crews.
We had to hire private Type II IA crews. And then this is the big one down here. So firefighter one hand crews, this is the first year that we've actually put together Firefighter one handcrews. So each unit was funded to put together one crew. So essentially, we used the tools that we already had in our unit.
So we used our existing fire captains. We used our existing crew carrying vehicles. In some units, we did have to rent some facilities. But the takeaway at the end of the fire season was that they had experienced leadership. They were very motivated and they're supported by labor.
So it was a successful model. Next slide, please. So I was talking about growth a little bit. So this came right at the end of the fiscal year. So this is basically a relief and augmentation funding.
So just kind of look at that first line, three fifty four seasonal firefighters. Those firefighters were put on hand crews and for additional engine staffing. Next slide, please. Okay. So we did put into service three S-70i Blackhawk helicopters.
So the department has been working for quite some time with this. So nine are still to be delivered, expected to be delivered by 2022. The first three, the first one was a training spare relief platform, which is out of Sacramento, Von Helitac out of Tehama and then four zero four out of Columbia. So this was interesting to see these copters at work. They increased the tank capacity from three twenty four gallons to 1,000 gallons and they have much faster travel times.
So I think this first season was a good exposure to the capabilities of the S-70i Blackhawk. One of the big things that is coming that hasn't been developed, they're working aggressively on that is they will have night flying capabilities. I don't think that we're going to get there this year, but hopefully around the corner we'll be successful. Next slide. So this is when it all began.
August 16, early morning, a rare lightning siege comes through, approximately 12,000 strikes in a week, and of those 12,000 strikes, six fifty confirmed fires. Next slide. So the situation is essentially abundant ignitions, record low fuel moistures, significant drying post lightning. We have continuous red flag warnings, extreme drawdown due to a number of incidents. And then our federal partners are also burning.
So this isn't on state land. This is on state and federal and local land. Next slide. So Cal Fire has a goal of containing 95% of its fires to 10 acres or less. So we can achieve this goal when we keep our initial attack resources plentiful.
So during these events, the lightning stage, almost all of our resources were committed. Chief Missoni was talking about his resource at local government that supported that. But the one interesting thing that we see here is that during that event, we had a low in new starts. I don't have the exact numbers for you, we just started seeing a little bit of a slowdown in initial attack. So during that time, we were digging as deep as we could to get as many resources on the incidents as well as preparing for new incidents.
So we use a term called assistance by hire using local government resources for station coverage. And in my career, I've never seen an entire unit covered by volunteers. So those volunteer firefighters for up to two weeks staffed our state stations responding to all of our incidents and did a really good job. So during that time, all six of our CAL FIRE All Risk IMTs were activated, and those were multi jurisdictional, multi agency. In some cases, we would have two state teams and one or two fed teams on the same incident.
Next slide. So we're going to go over some stats here. So we've been keeping record since good record since the '30s, but we're looking at the top 20 largest California fires. And so everything you see highlighted is this fire season. So we're just going to go over a couple of those.
The August complex came from the lightning stage on the sixteenth and encompassed seven counties, 32,000 acres, nine thirty five structures. And we bumped down to the SCU complex, same lightning event covers, I think, six counties, almost 400,000 acres, and then it goes on. So out of the top 20, we now have six of the largest California wildfires happened in the same season. Next slide. So this is a comparison.
On the left hand side, you have the Camp Fire, which twenty eighteen in Butte County. Then you have the North Complex, which was this year in Butte County. What I just wanted to illustrate was really the footprint of those two fires is, these fires are affecting the communities almost back to back. So you have a Camp Fire, which is still rated as the most devastating structures, losing 18,804 structures. And right next to that, the North Complex now rates as the fifth largest at 2,352.
So we're right in this picture, we're looking at almost 21,000 structures damaged within two years. So we go to the right, this is in fact Napa. We're looking at the Tubbs Incident 2017 and the Glass incident. And both of these were in excess as well. So the tub is the number two most destructive fire, destroying 5,636 incidents excuse me, structures.
And then the glass, which is right next door happened this season just a bit ago was fifteen twenty structures. So go ahead and next slide please. So the two, these are the ones I was just talking about North and Glass. You can see that the communities are being affected back to back with large devastating fires. Next slide.
So we're going to just look at the deadliest fires. So this season, number five, the North Complex, fifteen reported deaths and number 16, the LNG Lightning Complex, six reported. Next slide. So here's the totality of what fires can look like as far as the numbers. SoCal Fire acres 1,409,987, that was from 7,921 fires.
Cal Fire and other partner agencies, we put up their logos up there because these are all all these agencies cooperatively work together. So in the state of California, this fire season for this calendar year, 177,000 acres, 9,639 fires, thirty one fatalities and 10,488 structures damaged or destroyed. So in comparison, a block to the left, last year, the same interval, we had 5,600 fires per 137,000 acres. The last year was a good indication. We did have a wet winter, snowpack, we had good fuel moistures and we didn't have the events that we had this summer.
So this year's acres are just for Cal Fire is almost five times. So our five year average is roughly 5,600 fires per year and 446,000 acres. Next slide please. Okay. So I really appreciate the opportunity to share some insight of our agency and open to any questions if you may have some.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Chief. I am curious what other differentiators that you see are impacting the severity of this last season. I get the reductions in the principal space, and I get lightning seizures and the fuel load and the weather. But are there any other major contributors?
Speaker 4
No. I think the important thing is there's bits and pieces of and it's really it's a combination of all those coming together. So a reduction in available resources due to significant drawdown, that lightning siege. I can't, off the top of my head, really tell you that there were other significant factors. It really everything came together, and we were spread really thin, really fast.
And given the circumstances, the weather events that stacked up behind those ignitions, it just was kind of a natural flow. So Chair, I don't have a good answer for you.
Speaker 3
The If I could also, you mentioned that there were a significant amount of volunteers. In fact, we were staffing two facilities with volunteers for some longer term period. Have we been utilizing and you also mentioned that conservation camps that there had been some shutdowns. Are we still using any prison facilities or individuals to help fight fires?
Speaker 4
Yes, absolutely. So, we the California Department of Corrections still provides firefighter training and physical training for inmates that meet the criteria to be on our Type one hand crews. So that is still existing. They are still processing and training and delivering folks into our conservation camps.
Speaker 3
Okay. And my last question, and this is really connected to the question immediately prior. I had heard purely anecdotally that even when some of these inmates had done their time and been restored to society that their past history, despite all this fire training, was not allowing them then to join the Varian Fire Services. Do you have any comment on that? Or is that anecdotal information accurate?
Speaker 4
Well, I think I can speak for our agency. I have also heard the same. I can tell you that Cal Fire or the State of California HR, when they we go through an application process annually for Firefighter I that opens up in November, and essentially, it's a scoring process. And so those incarcerated inmates that have been released, they do meet certain criteria to get ranked and hireable on our Firefighter one hiring list. So they are they have an opportunity to come into CAL FIRE.
And actually, there are several folks that I know that are within our agency that have had an incarcerated background and are now doing very successful in our agency.
Speaker 3
That's excellent, Chief. Thank you for sharing. I believe Board Member Block has a question.
Speaker 11
Hi, thank you for your presentation. Really appreciated it. This is an immense year. I want to thank you and Cal Fire for all you were able to do. Can you tell us a little bit about Calfire's role in fuel management in the long term into the future, in particular with the conifer forests part of the state in Northern California?
Speaker 4
That was one of the topics I was talking to Jamie about was my focus works in the utility fire mitigation. So unfortunately, I'm not the guy that has all the answers. Do play a significant role in the state's efforts on private lands for fuel reduction. I can't speak on behalf of the specific force that you're mentioning, but we do I shared with you some of those fuel reduction goals. And we are gearing up the last couple of years, and we have a lot of momentum.
We are streamlining our project processes. I was I heard a complaint that it does take some time to get through NEPA and CEQUA. Our agency is working closely with all the other agencies that are involved with FUEL's projects, and we are becoming successful with reducing the time line and the lag that we're all kind of in tune with. So our department has made drastic improvements and have met some of our recent have met our previous year goals and will continue to be a focus of our agency's efforts.
Speaker 11
Great. Thank you. I thought that might be your answer. I have an assumption that many of my fellow board members too aren't totally educated on how fuels are managed throughout the state and what we can learn more. So I may reach out for resources or contact from you later offline.
Thank you.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Board Member Block, and I think your fellow Board members would actually be very appreciative if you would share some of that information. It is certainly not a strong suit of mine, and I would be I'd be very thankful for that. And thank you, Chief. I don't see any more questions at this time. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jamie Ormuth.
Speaker 5
Thank you. You hear me? I'm off mute. Okay. Now is the time for the stretch break.
If you could go to the next slide, please. We are going to take a stretch break, fifteen minutes. We'll come back at 02:45, if that works for the chair. Chair, does that meet your time
Speaker 5
So we're going to reconvene at 02:45. If you would please stand up, stretch it out, turn off your video, mute your phone, get the blood flowing, get some more water. We will return at 02:45 for the next part of the meeting. Thank you very much. Enjoy the stretch break.
Thank you very much to our presenters. We'll see you back here at 02:45. 02:45. We'll see you then. Mute your phone.
Speaker 3
I hope you all made very good use of it. And as somewhat of a coda to the discussion we had with the municipal and the co op community on November 19, I'd like to welcome back the speakers Jessica Nelson, the General Manager of Golden State Power Co op Barry Maline, the Executive Director of California Municipal Utility Association Scott Psamszewski, Northern California Power Agency and Mario DiBernardo, Southern California Public Power Authority. Let's see. We do appreciate your continued participation. A few introductory remarks, if you'd bear with me.
We received public comments from the joint associations, from the organizations CMUA and CPA, SCAPA and GSPC. We also received public comments from SMUD, DWP and grid subject matter experts. Comments were quite useful in understanding the challenges that POUs face, the difficulty they also face with any new reporting process. I think what I glean from comments is that the POUs, at the end of the day, want to protect their resources, not affect customer rates, but at the same time they are also very concerned with focusing their efforts on the work of wildfire mitigation and not on anything that they to them appear to be extraneous to that effort. So, I mentioned they're concerned about protecting their customers from any of the catastrophic consequence of wildfire, particularly utility ignited wildfires.
And from our standpoint, that's a good thing because that's the same mission that this advisory board has been given. And because of our unique relationship with the publicly owned utilities and co ops and that being that we play an advisory role to them, We felt it was important to respond to their comments and those responses were included in attachment two. We do in fact hope that they were helpful. Legislature created this Board to ensure a broad expertise is available to help develop best practices for wildfire reduction. The Board is just beginning the process of developing recommendations on best practices.
There are some here in our guidance advisory opinion. We were tasked with reviewing all of the plans submitted by the POUs and co ops and commenting on the content and sufficiency of the wildfire mitigation plans. The Board is required to provide comments as well as our advisory opinion. The legislation details which should be included in the plan and the Board focused its review in these areas, these requirements are included in attachment one. Because this is the Board's first round of publicly owned utility wildfire mitigation plans, we thought it important to provide information about how we believe each POU can best meet these statutory requirements.
This is why the advice in this advisory opinion mostly lays out the type of information that we believe are needed to meet the statute. It's frankly, it's more than that, though. The WMPs tell a story about the POU's wildfire mitigation efforts. And in this guidance advisory opinion, we explain the ways that the story could be communicated better in certain areas such that a broader audience could, in fact, better understand. Again, this is a guidance document, and we understand that it explains the information we want doesn't necessarily show it.
What we're hoping to do is that we can work with your organization to create more detailed guidelines that utilities can use to consider when updating their WMPs for the 2021 filing submission. All right, so I'm opening up the discussion now to the muni and co representatives. A few questions. You don't need to answer them in order or if they're contained in your comments, that's fine. Do you think the guidance document, at least this initial one, starts to pave a clear path forward?
What do you see are next steps in creating more detailed guidelines? And what else would you like the Board to consider? I think with that, I'll start with Barry Meline, Executive Director of CMUA. Barry?
Speaker 12
Well, you, Chair Edwards. The answer is yes, it does. To answer the question directly, it does provide, you know, a good, some great feedback on where the Board is clearly and the general direction of what you'd like to see going forward. And I think it opens a dialogue in terms of the kinds of things that you're seeking and the kind of things that would make sense in our communities. So we see this as an iterative process.
We're going to be doing this for, I don't if I'd say forever, but this is something that we believe that is going to go on for quite a long time. So this is the first stage this iterative process. You asked the question what we would like to see changed in particular, correct? And I can identify two items specifically and not to garner the attention from my fellow panelists, but we have communicated and this is something that we all agree on. So the first item is we ask that the guidance reflect the fact that per the statute and this is of course in the finalization of the guidance recommendation that as the guidance reflects the statute that the comprehensive wildfire management plans that the updates be prepared at least every three years.
So that would correlate with the statute. And we also ask that there'd be some recognition that the independent evaluation also be done in instances where there's a comprehensive change to the wildfire management plan, not so much as just an annual update with minor changes, but when there's a comprehensive change and we know that has to take place every three years. So we would like this clarification to be included in the guidance if possible. We see that kind of potentially being included somewhere in page, I don't know, II or III, you know, upfront in the introductory materials before the recommendation. And then the second item is regarding Recommendation two, which is on Page three, and that is just a minor modification to the nomenclature, just the words that are used there.
The words talk about the concerns about the budget mechanism, and we would prefer to focus on funding for the wildfire management plans and wildfire management activities rather than budget. And the reason why is that the plans and the activities are part of a much larger budget for the utility, not just and wildfire activities are just a segment of that. I mean we're talking things like power supply and delivery of power and so on. So granted wildfire issues do crosscut a variety of those. Nevertheless, we would like the wording to focus on funding rather than budget.
And we have some suggested language that we can give to after this meeting so that and it's just relatively simple. So those are basically our two recommendations for the changes to the guidance.
Speaker 3
Okay. The and certainly, as we go through some of the commentary from all of the agencies, I encourage the Board, if you have follow-up questions or inquiries. I have a couple on what you just said, Barry. With respect to the statute in the every three years, I think everyone agrees. I think and this meeting also is part of the public record.
So I think the interest in looking at 2021 was to arrive more rapidly at a structure or template that the muni and co op community as well as the board agreed provided the necessary information such that then we translate to doing incremental reviews of each of the agencies, which we did not do this time and which was surfaced. But I think without a clear agreement on the communication path or the meaning of certain things, I think it would have been problematic. So I think that's what the focus was on 2021. It's just starting to narrow down so that when we go to a three year iteration, it's more sensible to both sides. Secondly, with regard to your comment on the IEs, I am not one to create the permanent employee permanent employment act for IEs.
I'm not interested in them rubber stamping a report every year and changing two words in it. So what I do want to ensure though is our view from initially from the IEs and Board members, again, interrupt me if you do not concur or have additional questions. My interpretation was that the IEs were to be additive. They were intended to bring best practices from sometimes their broader view of the landscape with municipals and co ops such that they would then be advantageous to the agency who they were writing their analysis for. And my concern is there might be something that comes up that's very cool that the utility will never become aware of without potentially doing the IE evaluations somewhat more frequently.
So we can caveat that too to include maybe just a partial review of some of the new and upcoming best practices and maybe answer it in a more narrow fashion. So we don't launch this broad multiple iterations of review. The last thing you brought up was funding. I understand that no one, even though much of the information is public because it's transferred between the city agencies and the utilities themselves with respect to budget. I don't think we were looking for some holistic evaluation necessarily of the budget as a whole because it's difficult enough for people to understand, let alone for people who are three or four clicks back.
I think the question we're attempting to answer and again, Board members, I think the question we're attempting to answer is what in fact was the funding to use your terms and how were people in the hierarchy then made aware at the conclusion of that funding year? Did that work get done or were those dollars appropriated and moved somewhere else, which happens in any and all budgets. But I think the concern we had is if you commit to do X amount of miles of fire resistant conductor or change out certain equipment on transmission lines and you set that goal, what's the methodology to ensure that that goal is being accomplished? Or just so that your own decision makers are aware that it wasn't accomplished and the money was reallocated. I think that was really the interest not in boring into the individual budgets.
I want to stop right now and make sure I check the temperature of the Board in that no one has any strong disagreement with anything I said or needs to add to it at all. Okay. At the very end of hearing from all of the participants where I haven't gotten feedback from the Board, I'm going to surface some, to me, largely ministerial adjustments and we can take the temperature of the Board in that fashion. Barry, do you have any other comments or can I move on?
Speaker 12
very briefly, one is, I didn't get a chance to say how much we appreciate the board's engagement in this process. We know that it was a major undertaking and looking at about 50 agencies planned. So we definitely appreciate everyone's time, attention and expertise in pulling together the guidance. I mean, so thank you all
Speaker 3
We for appreciate that. Believe me, after reading three IOUs and then being faced with over 50 municipal and co op plans, it was something that kept us up for a number of evenings. But I appreciate that. Scott, I'd hear from me, Barry, I stepped on
Speaker 12
And I was just going say there were several changes that in our comments you did adopt in preparing this next round of the guidance and we appreciate you taking up those. So one thing that you mentioned about best practices is something that we want to engage or we will be engaging with all of our members in identifying what those best practices are and sharing the association. That's part of what we do, yes, as an association so or as will be doing that. And even things like the templates that you talked about that are in the guidance. We want to continue to work with the Board and staff on developing the right kind of templates that make your review easier for the next round.
Speaker 3
a very unusual board. You don't see a group of industry experts assembled. We are not regulators. There are people on this board who have a depth of field in their area that I can't even touch. And so it's I think it's very important to be able to solicit their feedback.
The Vice Chair has a quick question for you, Barry. Vice Chair Cohen?
Speaker 13
Yes. Thanks, Barry for and everyone for your cooperation. And I just wanted to tee off the last remarks and actually where you started, which is we see this as the opening of the dialogue. So, I guess maybe it's going to end up being more of a statement than a question. But and I particularly appreciate you acknowledging here the efforts we went to in revising the draft based on the joint association comments.
And this is we do see this as an iterative process. And just in general, I wanted to note that our first meeting was in January 2020. And we had to go through I mean, think I bring this up every time, but we went through the IOUs 2020 WMPs, then we did the IOU 2021 WMP guidelines and now we're looking at the POUs and the cooperatives. And I think it's just exciting to me in some ways because we're in a co creation process, a collaborative process here. So, and just keeping in mind when you when any of you make recommendations about where we go next, We're reading it based on our expertise as Marcy just said, it's an our Chair, excuse me, Chair Edwards just said it's an amazing board and I've learned so much from my colleagues.
But also we're reading it from the perspective of someone who's picking up the document and looking at it. And so there's some things that will be across the board for all of the utilities, but some things we felt would just make the material that was already digestible and with respect to things that might that we want to address, it doesn't mean we want a solution for it. It may be something that you say, hey, we are looking at this. We've looked at this and we don't have an answer or it's not relevant. We just want to make sure that all the boxes are checked based on the statutory requirements.
So thank you.
Speaker 14
Yes. Again, I do want to make sure that you know that we thank you for your participation. This has been collaborative and we wanted to continue to be collaborative. We saw that we believe the platform was underutilized in information. We truly do understand that each POU is unique and it would have been egregious of us not to ask for more information to really give us context to the challenges.
Even addressing best practices, we understand that not putting not creating concrete our intention isn't to create concrete best practices because they might not be able to be carried out by certain unique and particular POUs. But where there are commonalities across the board and they are deliverable, that's something we would like to identify. And more information is something that will allow us to do that. And again, I want to reiterate, it is amazing, the seven particular expertise on this board. We're going to need each PLU to pull back the husk so that we can activate those expertise for the betterment.
And again, we do enjoy the fact that you are open to the collaborative process. Chair Edwards?
Speaker 3
Thank you, sir. All right. Seeing no other inquiries from the Board at this time, I'd like to move to NCPA, Scott Tomczewski.
Speaker 19
Thank you, Chair Edwards, and good afternoon, everyone. I think the point in terms of iteration is really important here. All have the same mission here. This is all about reducing risk of catastrophic wildfire. And so the idea of sharing best practices and having a process that allows us to continue to revisit what we do is really important.
And so recommendations are not a reflection of things are wrong. Recommendations are a reflection of things that we should give consideration to. And so the subtle changes that you've made in the document that address flexibility, the use of the term as appropriate, the movement towards guidance and guidelines and how the templates are used. I mean, we look at the template as the POU template that we started with to help a lot of our member utilities develop their first document. As they go to the second one, they'll enhance that.
There'll be improvements each time. We only get better in this. And as we have these conversations, we will all collectively get smarter in terms of the things that we So that's really important in all of this. And even when we talk about the funding issue, the whole notion of the approval process, I think that's an improvement in terms of what was being asked originally. It's really how do we deal with the approval process, recognizing that when we authorize something we're going to do with respect to wildfire mitigation, we're going to fund it.
That's just sort of the nature of what we do when we deal with budget accounting. It's very different than IOU accounting. And for a lot of good reasons, there's considerations and district considerations involved in that. So that's important to incorporate. The other thing that gets becomes really important with these types of documents is the context around what's there.
I think we start to understand the things that are important to us collectively, but then there's occasionally that policymaker or industry expert or someone that picks the document up and really has no context for what's happened before. So, when we talk about discussing the role of the independent evaluator and how that fits into the equation and what were the statutory requirements and what we're trying to do, it's helpful to have that in the documents so someone can actually get a full scope and realize that we're all still trying to move forward productively, even though there might be different models that are in this entire equation that might treat it differently. So, Barry made a couple of the points that we've talked about in terms of addressing specific changes, I do think that this document goes a long way towards moving a collaboration on this. And so, I would think that from an NCPA perspective, we're certainly committed to sharing best practices, hearing best practices, considering recommendations that you have with the understanding that there are instances where it may just not apply. That's not a suggestion that we don't think it's important.
It just wouldn't be applicable for that particular utility or district. And so I think as we move forward with this, I know we look forward to continuing this conversation and we love to talk about the good things we do and we love to learn about the good things that others are doing. Really appreciate the opportunity to be part of this again. And I'll turn it back to you, Cherublu.
Speaker 3
Thank you, Scott. One of the things I would ask is when things are found to be not applicable, having an understanding as to why would be very beneficial for this Board, because they just they're not as familiar with structure and with some of the challenges faced. And so knowing the whys, in particular, imagine if we find the same, well, here's why, and yet the problem potentially could be solved on aggregate. I worry about the resourcing, you know, trying to get people with the right skill sets in the right places, doing the right things. That's a challenge for IOUs and POUs and co ops alike.
So any more information we get as to the whys is always very helpful. Any okay. At this point, I'd like to move to Mr. DiBernardo. I've lost my list of names, so I hope I didn't slaughter yours.
And you're with the Southern California Public Power Authority.
Speaker 17
Yes, got it. Perfect. So, Mario DiBernardo with Scapa. Good afternoon, Chair and Board members. So, want to align ourselves with the comments made by Gary with CMUA and Scott with NCPA.
I want to thank the Board members for dedicating your time and expertise for the benefit of the State Of California. We recognize that wildfire mitigation planning is crucial for the public health, safety and welfare of Californians. And so we take compliance with AB ten fifty four very seriously. Thing I just I want to emphasize is that, well, clearly, the wildfire issue is not going away. And so we are going to have a long term working relationship with the Board.
And so we look forward to continuing our working relationship with the Board and working collaboratively, including discussions with the Board and the Board staff in the next few months as we work together on issues like those discussed in Recommendation four of the guidance advisory opinion, where the document itself is suggesting that we all work cooperatively with each other, collaborate on the groupings and template issue. I think it would be beneficial to all of us and to the public power community especially. In those discussions, we got a better understanding of the context of some of the things you guys are looking for, some of the background, some of the things that are happening right now at this meeting where clarification on things like the best practices, we're not trying to establish concrete practices, but be able to find commonalities and identify those. So those types of things will be helpful for us to know as we work with you and collaborate. And I think we could really be a resource to provide ideas and how to make the plan structured in a way where you're getting the information, streamlining your review process because of the structure and also making it efficient and effective for publicly owned utilities to complete and share the information with both the Board and the public.
So I want to thank you for the opportunity to participate in this. Thank you for in the revised version of the document, items that you had changed in light of the comments we had submitted. So really, again, just want to emphasize that we recognize this is
Speaker 3
Good. I certainly appreciate that. What a lot of people forget is that the stance of publicly owned utilities is from a customer oriented motive. It is not for a profit motive. There are no stockholders.
There's no dividend to maintain. And so they act as a very effective bellwether and their adult supervision is typically within half a mile of the utility. It's not remote oversight by any way, shape or form. And I personally can testify to that. Ms.
Nelson, my apologies for leaving you till the end. I just wanted to kind of group the public. Could we hear from you, please?
Speaker 20
Thank you, Chair Edwards. I just really want to emphasize how we as group as the joint association have been working together. We provided comments to you and we really appreciate all the thoughtful
Speaker 20
these recommendations. We want to use all the expertise that we can. And so we know the board has a lot to offer us and you have quite a few recommendations that we can all incorporate and evaluate if they're applicable and go forward with continually improving our wildfire mitigation plan. Like you said, Chair Edwards, we're doing this for our communities. We want to prevent wildfires in any way possible.
And so we will take any advice and in fact, the joint associations have been talking about ways that we can convene some best practices so that internally we can share as much information as possible. I think your last meeting was very helpful, so we could kind of kick that off and see how those how different utilities are doing things and highlight some of those best practices. But I think the joint utilities are also going to take that upon ourselves as well and really try to share information as much as possible and work together to implement as much as we can. I do want to come back to the point though that this is an iterative process and a lot of these utilities that the co ops that I work with are very small. So to completely revise their wildfire mitigation plans by July will be quite an undertaking, more short on time already.
And so we want to work with you to try to make sure that we will absolutely do comprehensive updates within three years. And in the interim, we hope to make meaningful improvements as we go. And Board Member Porter mentioned it would be really useful to provide some context and we understand that as well. And so there could be some improvements in the interim before we get to a comprehensive overhaul of our plans that we can provide more context and we can really maximize the accessibility of the information so that you don't have to waste your time trying to find to make sure that we are meeting all of the requirements. And so we really, you know, we appreciate that you have already put a lot of time into this and we don't want to waste your time to have you flipping around trying to find all the information.
So we want to work with you on that absolutely and just continually get better at this process and this is just the first year and so we're really looking forward to each year improving upon our plans incrementally. So thank you very much.
Speaker 3
the group, because I always offer explanations, I'm going to step out for a moment. My husband's been hospitalized and they're delivering him by ambulance. And of course, the entire neighborhood is turning out to watch this event. So I'm going to step out for a moment. Diane, if you would consider some potential language changes on, as example, the July 21 date, maybe it's iteration, maybe it's just answer some of the significant questions without the municipals having to go through a massive approval process, which may not really prove beneficial and maybe, a real time extender for them.
The other one, if you would take a look to see if the utilization of the word funding and underscore our interest that with funding, we're interested in knowing did the work get done. And thirdly, as I mentioned, I'd like to avoid the Long Term Employment Act for the IEs and maybe there is a trigger language that we can use that says any significant or comprehensive change. If the Board could adjust those, if you are in agreement, we can direct staff to just adjust the language and it should not preclude us from voting on it today with an understanding that staff could in fact make some of those adjustments and they're wheeling him in.
Speaker 13
Apologize. Thank you, Chair Edwards, and I'm prepared to take over. So we can discuss if the Chair does not return prior to our board discussion. If our advisors have taken note of those three items, we can take it up at that time. So, Ms.
Nelson, did you have anything else that you wanted to add?
Speaker 13
All right. I think we have covered, let me refer to our schedule here. We have covered the comments and the filing and I think we are now ready to go to the discussion. But first, do any Board members and if you could send them to me now your request, do any Board members have questions for the panelists, any of the panelists before we go into public discussion? Just raise your hand if you would like to ask a question or make a statement.
Board Member Mader.
Speaker 10
Thank you, Co Chair Feldman. In listening to the points made by all of the associations here, there was a lot of talk about best practices. And I'm very sensitive and I think the Board is very sensitive to the resources that are available and the need for these wildfire mitigation plans to be comprehensive but not excessive. But there are things that I think think many of you made these points that it would make it easier to review these plans if there were certain kind of checklists from like for instance a technical perspective on overhead in the high fire threat district area. I'd like to when I look at that as an engineer, I'm looking for the did we think about eliminating equipment that causes sparks in normal operation like using expulsion fuses, using the right type of lightning arresters, fault duties that are appropriate for fault interrupting equipment.
And I'm sure because of the professionalism I saw in these plans that that was done. But if it could just be mentioned that each one of these was analyzed, I'm not necessarily like telling we want to tell the POUs how to do it, but that they mentioned like X, Y and Z was analyzed. That would be very, very helpful when we were discussing like when you are discussing amongst each other, the kind of things that should be included in these plans that would help us greatly.
Speaker 11
Just to rip off of what the rest of my fellow Board members have said, understanding the uniqueness of the POUs and their context will be helpful. I'm making reference to recommendation number 11 on risk assessment, sort of situational awareness and data sharing. Coming from as an environmental scientist, I think it's super helpful to have broad characterizations of what kind of trees are in your service territory and what kind of weather patterns you tend to get seasonally and just having those broad context will be really helpful for understanding like on a broader scale when we evaluate these plans what the kind of risks are that you face in your environmental context and knowing that there's already now a lot of data and technology available publicly from the IOUs, you may or may not be partnering with them directly, but possible that you could be using their weather stations or some of their weather forecasts. I think there are many ways to leverage all of that available technology without having to do much investment yourself. I'm curious to know about those and would love to have discussions about them.
There are questions about it, I'm really jazzed about that part of the plan. So that's all I have to say. Thanks.
Speaker 13
And I will say now that we have heard, are there any other Board members who would like to make a comment at this time? And now that the so thank you. Now that the associations have heard from the Board, do any of the presenters want to make any closing remarks before we end this part of our meeting and move into the Board discussion on the advisory opinion. Seeing no responses, Mr. Merlin, would you like to make a comment?
Speaker 12
Sure. Only that we're eager to work closely with you all to finalize a document and incorporate these modifications. Again, as everyone has said, we appreciate the opportunity to work closely with you.
Speaker 13
Now, in this time of COVID, it's really nice. This community of reviewers and associations, know, deliverers of services to come together and work cooperatively. I think we need bright spots wherever we can get them. So, thank you for that. And that leads us into my next comment, is that I will ask our staff and I will say I think I'll take the moment to say that this is Ms.
Ormond's last meeting with us. She's going to go on to another role at the Public Utilities Commission. Yes, Catherine is very sad. We are all very sad to lose her. So Catherine will be your main contact going forward.
And I guess both of them are Jamie, you're going to be here until the end of the year. Is that correct? But so you can contact both of them, but Catherine will be taking the lead for us. And why don't we right after this meeting and before we get swept away in the holiday madness to schedule our next conversation and set the agenda for that. So I just want to put that out as a to do item for our advisors and ask the associations to just think about.
I don't think we have to meet before the end of the year, but I would like to see us schedule our next meeting in this time period. All right. So, I don't know if we want to keep I guess we can have the panelists now be I don't want to use the word downgrade, but put in the status change status. I guess they're going to go into the economy part of the screen. Catherine?
Speaker 2
Hi. So we are talking about making potentially making changes to the document. Is that is that correct? Yes. And if and if that's the case, I would like a little bit more from Barry on exactly Alright.
What what he recommends being changed.
Speaker 13
Well, Chair Edwards laid out three different modifications. So that's a good suggestion. Why don't we in real time take input from the associations on what those changes would be and then as we can incorporate those into the board discussion.
Speaker 13
Yes. And I think everyone can Jessica and Mario and Scott still there. So I think all four of you can stay on while we have and I'm going to turn it over to Catherine to just go through what you would like Catherine, what you heard and what how you would like to see the language evolve for these changes. Now and before we do that, I just I want to level set what we are trying to do here. Again, we see this as our general I think we called in fact we called it that the general guidance advisory opinion for all of the plans.
And so these would be changes in my view, these would be changes that would reflect the launch pad for the next discussion and I rather than resolving certain issues right now. And I think with that caveat, I think we can get there quite easily. So, I'll turn it over to Kathryn now to lead that conversation.
Speaker 2
So, So I think I understood the change about the funding and that request was to just change the word budget to funding in most places in that section.
Speaker 12
The other Yes. Two we also had a I didn't say the words, but because I suggested that way, I just emailed to you, but we have a suggested sentence that would help. Should I read that to you?
Speaker 2
and I'd like to have Jason I'd also can Jason, can you speak a little bit? I'd like a little bit of direction from Jason about how to if we need to make the changes on the dais, if we need to pull it up on the screen, or if we need to, if there's changes that can be made later if we kind of have a general agreement or do you think it needs to be quite as detailed as line item edits?
Speaker 13
Yes, Jason, please introduce yourself because not everyone may know who you are.
Speaker 15
Yes, this is Jason Reagor. I'm an attorney with the California Public Utilities Commission and my role here today is to help be a legal liaison to the board for matters of process like this. And it is completely within the board's discretion to make changes from the dais. That is perfectly fine. If the board wants to have a couple of options.
Let me say you can make changes from the dais staff can incorporate those changes. Can come back next time and vote on it again to to ratify those changes. That is probably the simplest way from a staffing and a legal angle. But if if for time reasons you want to vote on this today and not have it ratified later, can we can wordsmith it from the dais, which can be time consuming, but is very clear and very public and everybody can see the changes being made and everybody knows exactly what they're voting on. There are also you can vote the document out with some pretty specific changes to be made by staff, such as changing words budgets to funding.
Or if Barry could read the sentence out he has so that there is a public record of that and everybody knows that sentence is the change the board is adopting to what is currently on our agenda, that would be great. I will say there there what you all want to avoid is giving is voting this document out with directions to staff that are a little unclear so that staff doesn't know what exactly how to capture your thoughts and your votes in the in the proper final document. To the extent we can be as most specific as possible that would be best. Thank you.
Speaker 13
So, let me take the conversation in this direction. First of all, we are an advisory board making an advisory opinion. So, the document and we appreciate that you're taking it as seriously as it deserves to be taken. And having said that, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, this is going to be issued as the 2020 output of the board for 2021 documents. So I would just suggest we did put it out in draft.
We had comments. We are looking at it now to not delay I mean my preference would be to not delay voting on this today so we could get into the work. And I would say unless there is something that is so egregious or would have unintended adverse consequences with the publicly owned utilities and cooperatives that we keep those any changes today in this document to a minimum. So let me just put that out there and then ask for Board comment, Mr. Mader.
You're on mute.
Speaker 10
Is there a compelling reason why we couldn't take the input that was provided by speakers and have staff work perhaps a new document for us to approve next time. It does seem as a deliberative process that I myself would prefer that unless there is some compelling operational reason like to progression of these W and Ps that we couldn't do that.
Speaker 13
Any other Board comments? I guess I'm suggesting in response to that, my suggestion is that we again keep the changes to a minimum and I understand that and I think the most important one is the budget to funding one and that the others will be part of the next wave of our discussions and process. So that's where I am because I don't we and Jason, you can help me with this. I mean, we would make changes that those wouldn't necessarily go out for public comment and then we're I don't know exactly when we're going to meet next quarter. So I would my preference and recommendation to the Board would be that we try to wrangle this today.
Board Member Porter, do you have a statement you want to make?
Speaker 14
Yes, I do. Think that we should at least hear the three changes and we could have that discussion even if we don't do anything today. I don't believe that the suggestions, while I was listening to Mr. Maligne, isn't substantial. It's just a more it's a better clarification, I assume, for the members that he represents.
But it would be good for us as a Board, a collective in this arena to hear the possible changes.
Speaker 13
Are there any objections to going forward with that? All right. So Mr. Malin, if you want to proceed.
Speaker 13
Correct. Correct. These are going to be suggested changes then we'll discuss whether or not we feel comfortable. And Jason, will turn to you whether we can feel comfortable of walking through the editing process in real time either accepting or rejecting those. And Mr.
Merlin, I will then also repeat that in offering these changes if they can be as surgical as possible and only those that are deemed absolutely necessary. So we can put it all on the table and have a discussion about it as soon as you're done giving us any information.
Speaker 12
Okay. Well, doing that in real time, in looking at on Page three, recommendation number two and Scott Tomasevskiy, I want to make sure that you're also focused on this particular one.
Speaker 13
Me, excuse me. I think it would be helpful. Is it possible to have one of our advisors share her screen, so we can see the language in front of us?
Speaker 12
Scott, we had talked about deleting paragraph three, I believe, right? I'm sorry, I'm just saying this to cue Scott. But there is language in paragraph three that does talk about validating the plan versus actual that I'm not sure the Board wants to lose.
Speaker 19
Yes, just adding to that, really the notion that we're trying to incorporate here is that the approval process basically incorporates funding that's needed to complete any work that's included in wildfire mitigation plan. So it gets away from the question of how do we do this as opposed to it's all part of our approval process. And that becomes something that's a little bit easier for us to describe as opposed to saying, are there how are you to fund this? The funding mechanism is a subset of city or district budgeting. And so that becomes first and foremost.
And when we deal with the activities that are authorized to be done in a community, they have to be funded. It's not as if we can create some additional funds that actually make that happen. And so it's intended to sort of thread this needle in terms of the budgeting element is really tied to how we fund certain activities, which is part of a broader discussion that we have within the community budgeting process that we undertake. This part is
Speaker 12
So Scott, the that one that sentence that we're suggesting the approval process incorporates funding, which I'll read entirely, where should we suggest that that sentence be added?
Speaker 19
It would really be part of that first paragraph with the approval process.
Speaker 19
Yes. Although you'd have to draw it, the only a small paragraph is requested here, you'd move that to
Speaker 19
would be the best way to do it. If it required a little bit of additional wordsmithing to that paragraph, that's fine. But it brings the focus on the fact that the community budgeting is going to fund this project if it's actually authorized as something the city would do.
Speaker 12
So the sentence that we have is the which we're just debating where to put it, but we'll at least say the sentence. The approval process incorporates funding that is needed to complete any work that is included in any WMP. And I'll repeat that. The approval process incorporates funding that is needed to complete any work that is included in any WMP. And we see putting that in the first paragraph, probably the second to the last sentence before only a small paragraph is required here or requested here.
Speaker 19
And if you needed to complete the thought from a board perspective, you could put a couple of words in front of that approval process sentence and basically so the Board recognizes that the approval process incorporates funding that's needed to do this. Because in some respect, this is sort of a guidance and directives for us to consider. And this is more of a statement of what we actually do. But I think it's important to recognize that nuance.
Speaker 13
So Scott, are you saying the approval process should incorporate funding or does incorporate funding that is needed?
Speaker 13
right. So I think we're good with that. I mean, I'm not speaking for the whole Board. Mean, I'm just good with how you've characterized it and given us that language. I don't think we try not to add a lot of explanation.
So, this is clear this seems clear to me. So, if the associations are satisfied, we can move to the next topic.
Speaker 12
Well, the next one we and Jessica and Mario, ask you to put your antenna up on this one. This is regarding we were thinking about this being in the introduction on Page II and but we recognize that it could be in the introduction or it could be on the subsequent page III near the bottom of that. And that is we were asking for clarification. I think this is what Chair Edwards was talking about or she reiterated clarification that the comprehensive wildfire management plan updates be prepared at least every three years. That was one element.
And then the second element that the independent evaluation be required in instances where there is a comprehensive change to the wildfire management plan.
Speaker 17
Statute is silent on I just wanted to say the statute is silent on when independent evaluators do the work. So
Speaker 17
I think our expectation based on what we saw in the comments is that the independent evaluator would be doing the work that would inform that would be appropriate for informing the comprehensive review by looking at industry comparing the staffing in that sort of assessment?
Speaker 12
So, yes, the independent evaluation or evaluator language doesn't say when it's I think as Chair Edwards mentioned before, when there's a minor change or a modest change, it's not the intent to I forget exactly what you said, but the full employment for independent evaluators act. And I'm sorry, I don't mean that too sarcastically, but we do want to seek the independent evaluation when there is a substantial change. And clearly, that would be every three years. If there is a substantial change before then, then that might be appropriate as well. But nevertheless, we're looking for guidance on when the independent evaluation would be done and that is when there's a substantial change.
So that's what we would like to see in language. And I know for staff's perspective, we're not being perfect in our edits here, but that's the spirit of what we're talking about.
Speaker 13
Got it. Do you have any suggested language? Let's do this. Go mean, Catherine ahead Jessica.
Speaker 20
I could take a shot at it if that's helpful. We could put there or wherever you find me the right spot for this that the board recognizes that the guidance the board recognizes that comprehensive wildfire mitigation plan updates are to be prepared at least every three years. I'll pause there. Correspondingly, we ask or correspondingly, independent evaluations would be required in instances where there are comprehensive changes.
Speaker 13
And I think let me I don't I think the comprehend I don't think it's a comprehensive update. I think it's a every three years there has to be is it called a comprehensive update or is it called a wildfire mitigation plan and then in the interim years like year one and two there's an update?
Speaker 13
Every three years, okay. Comprehensive revision is different than an update because I think you also have the ability to file my recollection is to file those updates every year if you want.
Speaker 13
And my understanding of our revision our new document that we presented for today is that we've also kind of we've threaded that needle between updates and comprehensive revisions. So in the rest of the document. So this would be the only place we would put that intent in the document. Is that correct? Jessica, if you want to answer Jessica Nelson, you want to answer that.
Speaker 20
Yes. I think, I feel that want to address your concerns and make the information accessible. So I think there are ways for us to provide a cover sheet or continue to talk about how we can provide an update to you to help you navigate the information and to provide you some updates in the interim. And so this would cover, kind of our concerns about our ability to, implement and make all of these changes in the next couple of months. Though all of the comprehensive changes would be something that we would implement over the course of the next couple of years.
Speaker 18
Yes. So just trying to understand this a little bit. I know this is basically the advisory opinion that we're going to vote on today. Is this kind of premature to specifically this language right now in this particular document that can't be addressed in a future document? I mean, I think there's some time to think about some of this, a legal review, just to make sure we're not missing something might be in order.
I I understand
Speaker 13
Well, let's do this. I think we let's do this. Do you have a specific question? What I propose we do now is that we appreciate express our appreciation to the associations for giving us their feedback and that we dismiss them and then move to a Board discussion about what we want to do with the language that's been proposed. So Mr.
Porter, did you have a statement you wanted to make before we did that? Or can you weigh in on No, no.
Speaker 14
Actually, that lends to what it was that I really wanted to say it. This is again what I said earlier, it'd be good for us to see this and then have that discussion, not again adopting the language, but definitely moving to the next segment of our meeting and actually having that discussion. Do we add it now? Do we not add it? Who has reservations?
I do. I actually have one now since I've seen the language and it's just a question that isn't going to be well, I don't believe it is going to be answered today. So, let's move on to the next segment. Thank you.
Speaker 12
And I do think that language captures what we've been talking about and we definitely appreciate the working nature of this. Sorry, I took so much time, but we appreciate the collaboration.
Speaker 13
Thank you, as do we. All right. So you can continue to watch the meeting, but now we're going to close off the association discussion and move to a Board discussion on the advisory opinion.
Speaker 2
or Kathryn? Would you like me to continue to share the screen or stop No,
Speaker 13
So before we move to the particulars of whether we should include the language today or not because I think that goes to the vote, I'm just going to see if any of the Board members and I don't think Chair Edwards has returned. Oh, I see her square there, but Chair Edwards, have you returned? No. So I'll continue. Let's structure our discussion like this.
I'd like to take opening comments from any of the Board members and then have a discussion among the Board members about the document. And finally, we can get to whether or not we're prepared to if we want to accept that language, all of the language, part of the language and even before that whether we want to look at it today. So why don't we first see if there's any opening statements. Board Member Porter, I'm going
Speaker 14
Yes. I'd like to say that this guidance document, at least I am very proud of it. Again, it wasn't a document created or devised to be something of a criticism, but definitely a critique of what we need moving forward and how we will be able to express our expertise individually in examining future WMPs from the POUs and the cooperatives. We're looking for more information, more context, more how, what, when and why from them. And we want them to give it to us in a fashion that it's collaborative and it's advantageous, so that we can get to the work that we're all here for, which is reducing the risk of municipality utilities being a source of ignition or even dealing with black swan events.
So again, very proud of this, examining many of my board, fellow board members have put things in there that I probably never would have considered, very comprehensive. Back to you, Vice Chair.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And I want to take this moment to acknowledge that Board Member Porter was part of the publicly owned utility and cooperative Bagley Keane Group. And I can as was Chair Edwards and myself were also in that Bagley Keane Group and I can attest that if it wasn't obvious from our workshop that Board Member Porter read every single one of these WMPs and thoroughly thought through what the process would be like and I want to acknowledge his contribution to great contribution to shaping the process not just the document but the process that we have today. So, you Board Member Porter. Board Member Armstrong?
Speaker 18
Yes. Thanks, Vice Chair Feldman. I also want to echo what Board Member Porter said that we're kind of proud of this document. It's a lot of work went into it. And again, we're just working as a group like this of individuals that come from different backgrounds.
We I did learn a lot as well. I personally the recommendations where I spent a good portion of my time were into grid design and system hardening, vegetation management and inspection. And as I read through or read through all 50 of those wildfire mitigation plans, one of the things that is very helpful and would be very helpful in the future is just like any risk assessment, you got to identify the risks. So when we start looking at high fire threat districts with the POUs and even the IOUs, but just identifying if you have those areas in your service area, what assets you have in those areas, just to identify those risks. Once you identify the risks, then you can narrow your focus on mitigating those particular risks.
So, I do appreciate all the work that went in from the POUs from my fellow Board members. And again, just thanks for letting me be part of this process.
Speaker 21
Hi. Yes, my comments are really similar to what everybody else has said and that you know the spirit has really been one of collaboration and a lot of my input had to do with requests for additional detail and more information and the idea is not to create more work or to try to pull out any kind of confidential information. It's really to just make the review process more efficient and effective. And so it's meant to be able to elicit that kind of information that describes the risk so that when the plans are evaluated and reviewed it is easier to be able to understand the plans relative to the risk in that particular POU because of course everyone is different. And something I really liked that a lot of the POUs did was provide maps and those maps are a nonverbal way to very effectively convey the risk of a certain POU.
It allows us to see especially if there's air photos or satellite imagery as a background to look at the vegetation condition, look at the relative amount, look at it in proximity to the infrastructure or the assets at risk And this speaks to something that I contributed a lot to which was the vegetation management part. And so was interested in knowing more information about why certain areas were designated in different areas of the high fire threat zones and why those different areas were put into those classes and then how the treatments were designed relative to those classes in addition to what is done with vegetation that is not in any high fire threat district.
Speaker 21
this just allows us to to make a better assessment of the actions that are being done and proposed in the wildfire mitigation plan. And the other is the recommendation to better understand the qualifications of the staff who are designing the vegetation management plans or practices and who are out there doing it. And you know I understand that it's not possible to add people to the staff but perhaps there's a way that in the future we could develop collaborative opportunities or have workshops or other kinds of educational opportunities that can help to bring ecological knowledge and scientific and botany expertise into the vegetation management planning process. And so in the spirit of collaboration and this is an iterative process this is where my comments were coming from.
Speaker 7
Board Member Block, do you have any opening comments on this discussion topic?
Speaker 11
Not many. Just to say that I even though there were very many of them it was really I really enjoyed seeing different PLU perspectives on the plans and as I mentioned earlier also building on what Alex just said it will be helpful to it's helpful to get these environmental context for what the risks are and where the assets are and this extra information will be super helpful in the future. Look forward to I'm also really proud of this document and really thankful to our staff, Catherine and Jamie for getting all our thoughts together into a coherent document and really looking forward to seeing how this is going to evolve as an iterative process and really grateful for the representatives today who could be with us and collaborate with us on it. So I'm looking forward to the future too. Thank you.
Speaker 10
Board Member Mader. Well, first I wanted to say how much I appreciate the effort that went into both the guidance document and to the wildfire mitigation plans that we reviewed. It was a comfort to have my colleagues and their expertise be able to look into areas that I'm not an expert, but I know that they are, but I can apply that work needed to be done and it was great to be able to confident that my colleagues would be able to look into those areas and provide their expertise and advice. Also, wanted to acknowledge the effort of the PLU engineers and others that put these plans together. I know when we reviewed large POU like SMUD, I expected those resources to provide an excellent plan and I wasn't disappointed.
But I was also really impressed by the effort of the smaller POUs and the engineering departments and the efforts that they put together. The professionalism was astonishing and I really do appreciate that. When I looked at the entire effort, I couldn't help but notice that there are many of the POUs and that risk profiles are not high that they I would like to see us look at in the grouping area about different types of reporting levels because really what we're looking at for is assets that are in the high fire threat disc areas. When I was looking at these plans and noticed by others, I looked immediately to and I read the comments in the workshop from the presenters from the IOUs, I mean POUs reflected that the priorities and risk reduction vegetation, inspections, maintenance and just asset evaluation, those are the big buckets that we need to look at. And I thought some really excellent work on, and I mentioned this earlier, in trying to reduce the risk profile by looking at the type of assets that they're replacing, say, expulsion fuses with non expulsion fuses, work like that.
Those are low hanging fruit. I saw that done time after time. I would like to see us come up with these templates and checklists that where the IOUs or POUs can attest quickly that they did that analysis. Sometimes the analysis was shown and it was very professional, but I was looking for was it done, were these things considered and I'd like to see that in a very quick and efficient way to be able to attest to that. And then on the operating practices, I saw a diversity of approach.
It's going to the comments of the public comments that we heard today. I saw a focus on making sure that water pumps, that city services, that sewer pumps all were taken were in power or sometimes the recognition that the risk was so high that the PSVS would have to be used. I saw diversity. I'd just like to see a forum where these type of practices can be shared with each other so we can see them proliferate through all of these plans. And then lastly, when I started saying that when I was looking at these plans from a technical perspective, I focused on overhead in a high fire threat just area because that's where the obvious risk is.
But I think that we also need to continue to encourage a questioning nature, a challenging nature upon our assumptions about where the risk is and to see I'd like to see incorporated into these wildfire mitigation plans a questioning section. We have a recommendation on that. So, my overall impression was I was very pleased with the professionals and thoroughness of the plan. I think that there is a lot that we can learn both from the individual plans and from the POUs from each other. Thank you.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And I have nothing to add to my colleagues' statements. I feel that they covered all the bases and again thank you to everyone. I just want to the Board and to the municipal associations, I just want to remind everyone that we are not a paid Board, we're not a permanent Board, that everyone has other things that they do And the enthusiasm and dedication that all of you as individuals have brought to this is really astounding.
Speaker 7
And I mean, it's not only I can't quite say it's a joy to do this work, but it certainly is a pleasure to dig into it.
Speaker 13
And I've learned so much from everyone. So thank you very much for putting together this document. And what I'd like to do now is open discussion on the document. Let's put aside the changes. And first, I'd like to solicit if there's anyone it seems that we've gone over this today.
We've discussed with the associations what we were doing. Now it's our turn to discuss among ourselves because of our Bagley Keane limitations. We more requirements we do this in public to see if any of you have comments on the document itself because we have our recommendations and the purpose of today's meeting is to we don't adopt the document necessarily but to vote on it and issue it as a public statement of our position. So, is there anyone who wants to make either comments in support of the document and what we've done? I think most of you have done that already.
So maybe I should see if there's anyone who has any exceptions that they want to take where they do not agree with the document and perhaps would write a concurrence or that would have a different point of view than we have already included in the document. So, I'll just open that up to the Board. Is there any basic that was a very long way of saying, I've heard that everyone supports the document based on their individual reviews. Is there anyone who has any exceptions or differences that they want to put out to the full Board now for either writing a concurrence or potentially changing the document. And I'm just looking for a show of hands if anyone has anything to say on that topic.
Seeing none, we'll now turn to the changes. In the chat, what I've done on the side is asked Katherine to prepare a document with just the changes and then Jason to tell us what our options are and then we can discuss what we want to do about those. So Catherine, could you please share your screen? And then could you walk us through both changes?
Speaker 2
So, change here, the request from the the POU's associations was to this sentence here. This is on page I three. The board recognizes that comprehensive revisions of the plan are to be prepared at least every three years. Correspondingly, independent evaluations are required in instances where there are comprehensive changes. So, those two senses inserted at the end of the introductory section.
And then the other changes were just the only other changes were in this this section two. And that one did it go away. They wanted to recommended changing budget to funding in several instances. When I heard that recommendation, this is how I, incorporated that. So there there is budget is in one place, but it it was just in this first sentence.
Municipalities have year round budgets, but in all other instances, I changed it. And then funding from changing and here where it said so this census is, additionally, Wassab is interested in understanding the context regarding how utilities are are then validating their plans. And before it said budget, but I said I I put funding allowances and reporting that to the bore to the reporting to the board that the funding was used the way it was planned. So that was with the word funding. And then the other change is that to add the sentence, the approval process incorporates funding that is needed to complete any work that is included in any WMP.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And now I'll call upon Jason Rieger to tell us what our options are with respect to this language.
Speaker 15
Yes, good afternoon. I believe the Board has a couple options before it. It could vote out this document without any of the edits suggested. It could vote out the document with the edits that are up here on screen and the public has seen. It could also continue to make more edits if it so chose right here, right now on the public facing screen.
It could also give staff some direction to edit the document and then come back at the next meeting and vote it out with version two point zero or whatever we want to call it. Lastly, you could vote it out today pursuant to those options I just gave you. And if you chose, you could bring it back at a future date and agenda size it properly and make additional edits or revisions then. That may not be your first choice given the time and perhaps confusion of the stakeholders as to if they're not tracking that it was subsequently revised. But it is an option available to you.
Thank you.
Speaker 13
Thank you, Jason. So we've had so Catherine, I think you could take your screen down now. Will do. And then we have had a couple opinions. So now that we've heard from our legal counsel and seen the changes, I'm going to first call upon Board Member Porter to see what your view is on this language and whether we can adopt you have any changes that you would like to see and adopt today or you still feel we need more time to look at it or what option would you feel comfortable with today?
Speaker 14
So I was tracking with Jason. And to let you know, first change concerning funding, there is absolutely no substantial change to what we meant there. It gives us a little bit more clarification. And if it makes the POUs more comfortable, I'm good with adding that change. The problem I do have is with the IE being employed under, I think it wasn't substantial, comprehensive changes.
I don't want to obligate them even though I don't think they anticipated this or anticipate us ever interpreting it this way, but eliminating the access to an independent evaluator and also how are we going to define what comprehensive is? Ultimately, we're looking at comprehensive happening every three years. Would that be instituting pole replacement program as part of the hardening protocols? Is that substantial enough or comprehensive enough to employ or elicit an independent evaluator? Would we even interpret that?
That's I'm a little weary about that. However, the funding, if we could split the baby in half today, I could see adding the language for funding or removing budget and adding funding. There is no substantial or contextual change there.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And I'm right with you. I'll just put that out for the Board. I concur exactly with that view. And it's not and I'll use the Vice Chair prerogative.
It's not that I necessarily disagree with the language on the IE. It's just to me it's a substantive statement and deserves more thought and conversation. And then that's the whole idea of the document and we talk about that later in the document and its recommendations that we want to look at the role of the IE. Okay, so is there anyone who has a different point of view than Board Member Porter put out about perhaps splitting this today?
Speaker 18
So, yes, I agree 100% with the changing. I mean, to me, changing the language from budget to funding is not an issue at all. With just one change to that, and I think it was brought up in the conversation, but making the change to it to the beginning of that just basically that the Board recognizes in front of that sentence.
Speaker 13
Catherine, did you note that? Does anyone have an objection to that change?
Speaker 13
And while she's pulling that up, is there anyone else who so what's on the table? We'll take a motion to this effect, but what's on the table is adopting this change on the part two on the budget to funding shift and then tabling not making the change and tabling the discussion on the every three years comprehensive planI. E. Role. So does anyone have a different point of view?
Speaker 13
right. Hearing none, let's look at the language estimator. I can't see you unfortunately. So if you want to raise your hand, please put it in the chat because I can only see a few people at a time. And with that Board Member Mater.
Speaker 10
you. I'm looking at the sentence, the approval process incorporates I also have no problem changing budget to funding. That's not a problem. But the approval process incorporates funding that is needed to complete any work that is included in any WMP. Is that statement actually accurate?
I mean, isn't there other ways that you can get funding for projects in the WM that might be in a WMP? I don't know. And I just wonder if that statement is accurate.
Speaker 13
That's the statement that was given to us by the joint associations. And I think the implication was that they wanted to have us acknowledge that whatever work was laid out in the WMP would be funded. May be other words that's not in the WMP, but goes to wildfire. I don't know, but this is how they characterized it.
Speaker 10
Well, but the approval process referenced in the sentence above references Public Utilities Code section, so forth and so on. And so, is that second sentence consistent with Public Utilities Code Section seven eight thousand three hundred and eighty seven? Because it seems like that additional sentence is referring to the approval process, which we have linked to the Public Utilities Code.
Speaker 14
Vice Chair, this is Board Member Porter. This, it's with the addition of Board Member Armstrong, Board recognizes the we're saying we recognize the process that any protocols or programs that are to be done in the plan have an approval process. And then what we're really asking for is additional context, right, so which is the next sentence to that. Those in conjunction give the right contextual meaning or at least I believe so, unless I'm wrong. Board Member Mater, do you see it differently?
Speaker 13
So, as the lawyer of our group, I'm not legal counsel, but I am a lawyer. That section and we quoted it specifically because there was some question about how to describe the approval process and the governing boards just requires a governing board to approve the WMP. So, we're not what this added sentence says is it defines what should be included in that process and I think if I may observe what this attempts to do is say, hey if you're going to governing board or director of my agency or whatever public process I have at the end of it, want to make sure I have money as well as a plan. I have money to implement the plan. So that's how I see it Board Member Mader.
Speaker 10
Thank you, Vice Chair Cohen. I don't really have a significant objection to this.
Speaker 13
All right. Is there any other thank you. Is there any other discussion? So I will now entertain the first we're going to have two votes and legal counsel Rieger has informed us that we have to do roll call votes for virtual meetings per the governor's guidance. So we will do that.
May I have a motion with respect to this additional language proposal? And I'll look to Board Member Porter since he came up with the idea.
Speaker 14
I'd like to put forth a motion to adopt language, new language in Section two with plan structure added changing the word budget to funding and adding the sentence, the board recognizes their approval process incorporated funding that is needed to complete any work that is included in any W and P.
Speaker 13
Board Member Armstrong, we'll go to discussion. Board Member Porter, may I make a friendly amendment based on our legal counsel's input and just add at the end as shown public during our public meeting today, so we can indicate that this was something that was discussed publicly?
Speaker 13
Okay. Any other discussion on this motion? I'm going to ask Jamie, if you can go off mute to in one of your last official acts to call the roll for our vote.
Speaker 5
Board Member Seifert? Aye. And Chair Edwards is unavailable. So with that, the motion passes.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And so the next, task we have in force is moving adoption of the guidance. I'm going to read the title guidance advisory opinion for the 2021 wildfire mitigation plans of electric publicly owned utilities and cooperatives as amended by the last vote as revised by the last vote. Is there someone who would like to move that for adoption? Board member Porter?
Speaker 14
Like to make a motion to adopt the advisory guidance document as amended.
Speaker 13
you. Any discussion? All right. Ms. Orman, will you please call the roll for a vote?
Speaker 5
Absolutely. On the topic of the guidance advisory opinion with the amended language in Section two, Vice Chair Coleman. Aye. Board Member Porter. Aye.
Board Member Armstrong. Aye. Board Member Block. Aye. Board Member Mater.
Aye. Board Member Seifried.
Speaker 5
Chair Edwards, are you back? Chair Edwards is unavailable. The motion passes.
Speaker 13
Thank you very much. What a way to end the year. A lot of hard work by everyone on this and everything else and under very challenging circumstances. Who knew we'd when we saw each other in March that this is where we'd be meeting for all these times. So thank you all.
Thank you to the Publicly Owned Utilities and Electric Cooperative again for bringing this forward and working with us and we look forward to the continuing collaboration in the New Year. Are there any before we have actually let's have our public comment next. So as we end today's meeting with a final round of public comment, we'd like I did the thank yous already. If you'd like to participate in this final round of public comments, the phone number is 5017 and the passcode is 1767567 and press 1 to get in the queue. So let's check now with the Wildfire Safety Advisory Board email box.
Catherine Stockton, do we have any email? Catherine you're on mute.
Speaker 2
Thank you. We have a few we have a few public comments in the email. Brian Gavin at 01:30 Dear sirs and and or madam, my name is Brian Gavin, and I have lived in homes serviced by Southern California Edison most of my life. We all we always had Santa Ana winds events before. I don't remember a year when we didn't have them.
I don't remember these power outages. So what has changed? Now SoCal Edison is a private company. They don't care about customers. They care about the bottom line and making as much money for their shareholders as possible.
Shutting off the power is more dangerous. During the cold night night the other the other night, my only option for warmth was lighting the burners on my stove. I have had several I have several health health conditions I am currently dealing with. I was forced to prep myself for a procedure I couldn't reschedule by candlelight and without water. My home is serviced by a well.
If I don't have electricity, I'm without light, heat, and water. My solution to this problem would be to take the power companies over again. Infrastructure should not be a get rich quick scheme as it is now. Clearly, your regulations have failed us as a society. My question to you is how do you plan on fixing this mess because we cannot continue living in the dark ages?
Very disappointed, Brian Gavin. The next, there was a there was a note from the Acton Town Council, Jacqueline Ayr. She said that she was on the phone and she'd like to make a public comment. So, we'll be dive diving into that soon. Dial star one to get in the queue with the operator.
Then we have we have one question from Daniel Zaragoza from GRID subject matter experts, but it was a question about the independent evaluator change. And he said, what is the definition of a comprehensive or substantial update of the WMP? It should be clear when when a I e is required other than every three years. And then finally one from Bill Slocum. Dear all, please see the attached email from Mikhail Ganache from Kaggle Canyon regarding PSPS shutdown.
So the email from Mikhail reads with the COVID crisis a lot of people from work from home and kids are homeschooled. With these nonstop power outages we lose money and our kids miss a lot of important classes. I understand that it is for our safety and to prevent wildfires, but cutting off the power on any windy day is just avoiding solving the problem and making a real investment. In Europe, they buried their power lines decades ago and they don't know if it's the right solution, but at least they did something concrete so they don't shut down the power every time it's a little windy. In Edison developing a real investment to plan to effectively solve the problem or is their only answer to cut the power with every storm and put many families in difficulty.
Spectrum also cut internet. So even though we have a generator we still don't have the possibility to work. Thank you. Mikhail Ganache. And that is the end of the public comment that we received via the email inbox.
Speaker 1
We do have a couple of comments on the phone. First one comes from Jacqueline Ayer. Your line is open.
Speaker 8
Hello. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you.
Behalf of the Acting Town Council, I want to express appreciation for the comments from this board regarding your sensitivity towards the adverse impacts of PSPS events on rural communities. At this point no real evidence has come to light showing that any of Edison's PSPS events have actually prevented any wildfires. However we note that at least three wildfires were ignited in 2019 as a result of Edison's PSPS events. We also know that at least in Acton Edison has routinely initiated PSPS events in areas where local wind speeds do not exceed their PSPS threshold and where their fire potential index values are not extreme. In other words Edison's PSPS events are often completely unwarranted and unreasonable Yet they are initiated anyway despite the clear and present danger that these PSPS events pose.
The Acting Town Council has moved per party status in the PSPS rulemaking proceeding before the PUC. We are all we are an all volunteer organization with no budget and limited resources. So while we will do our best there is great uncertainty regarding the extent to which we can meaningfully participate in that broad and robust proceeding. Because of that rural communities throughout California are looking to decision makers like the Commission and advisory boards like yours to advocate on our behalf in a matter that at least levels the playing field in the PSPS arena which has to date been dominated by utility interests. Utilities like Edison seem to have unlimited resources and they have actively used these resources to blunt and dilute our concerns when we bring them to the Commission.
For example two weeks ago Edison's attorneys recommended that the Commission disregard Acton's concerns as unfounded, even though they were carefully documented and supported by evidence. In other words, the PSPS deck is stacked heavily against rural communities and we are powerless to do anything about No pun intended. So we rely on you and on the commission and on other advisory boards and decision makers to ensure that PSPS is implemented properly and used only sparingly as a last resort. Thank you very much.
Speaker 13
Thank you. And we appreciated your public comment on our draft. Thank you. Operator, is there another speaker?
Speaker 22
Yes. Thank you. I've been a sixteen year resident of Cagle Canyon and I am also an educator in LA County teaching public school online. I also have children who are going to school online. And I want to kind of put a human voice, I guess, to what happens when you turn off the power here in Kaggle Canyon.
Are pretty much when you turn off the power, and then we don't have Internet anymore, that is like turning a knife because we need to go to school. Right? And we also mentally just need that connection. So to be kind of feeling like we're living in the dark ages out here, it's compounded with no power. So not only are we we're all trying to be good staying at home, but to have no power, it's making it very mentally difficult.
And also, like I'm sure that people have said before me, students are losing access to education. Thank you.
Speaker 13
All right. Thank you very much, operator. Thank you everyone for public comment. We are a public entity and we do appreciate all of the input because it helps us understand the full scope of our work and the ramifications of our recommendations. So that closes public comment.
I will now ask the Board before we adjourn if anyone has some final thoughts they want to share today. I can see you all, so if you just want to raise your hand that's fine. All right, I think I can say on behalf of the Board to our able and noble advisors Jamie and Catherine, thank you again for everything that you've done to bring us to this point. It's hard to believe that your engagement in the Board just started in March. So it wasn't even the full year that we produced three major documents and conducted many we had several workshops and many meetings and even came up with a new risk standard sponsored by board member Mater.
So, thank you for that. And I wish everyone at this particularly challenging time when we can see the end of the tunnel with the COVID vaccine but where we're having record number of infections that everyone including some of our board family that everyone stays safe and healthy and have a happy holiday. So with that, I will take a motion to adjourn the meeting.
Speaker 13
Board Member Porter. Assume, is there a second? Nobody wants to second?
Speaker 13
great. And then I think I'll just refer everyone to Ms. Ormond's calendar invite for our next session. So thank you very much. And Mr.
Rieger, thank you very much for stepping up during this sort of new dimension to our Board meetings, but I think it ended very efficiently and effectively. So with that, we can end the meeting.
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