SB1370 - Covered wildfire mitigation projects: consolidated and expedited review.

Amended IN Assembly August 28, 2026 Amended IN Assembly August 27, 2026 Amended IN Assembly July 02, 2026 Amended IN Assembly June 11, 2026 CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2025–2026 REGULAR SESSION Senate Bill No. 1370 Introduced by Senators Stern and Becker February 20, 2026 An act to add and repeal Article 8.5 (commencing with Section 4745) of Chapter 10 of, and to add and repeal Chapter 1.8 (commencing with Section 4240) of, Part 2 of Division 4 of the Public Resources Code, relating to wildfire. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST SB 1370, as amended, Stern. Covered wildfire mitigation projects: consolidated and expedited review. Existing law establishes in the Natural Resources Agency the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which is known as and may be referred to as CAL-FIRE. Existing law establishes in CAL-FIRE the Office of the State Fire Marshal and requires that office to establish the Community Wildfire Mitigation Assistance Program to coordinate regional and local efforts with state policies, strategies, and programs for community wildfire mitigation in order to improve wildfire preparedness and prevention, with an emphasis on the most vulnerable communities. This bill would require that, notwithstanding any other law, any state-level environmental and resource permits, approvals, consultations, and reviews required for a covered wildfire mitigation project, as defined, be consolidated into a single coordinated review by a project review team, as defined, and administered jointly by the consolidated review agencies, defined as the Natural Resources Agency in coordination with the California Environmental Protection Agency. The bill would require an applicant seeking authorization to undertake a covered wildfire mitigation project to submit a single, consolidated application package to the consolidated review agencies. The bill would require a decision to be rendered by the consolidated review agencies within 60 calendar days of the consolidated review agencies deeming an application is complete, as provided, and would authorize the applicant and the consolidated review agencies to agree to extend the 60-day timeline if both parties agree to the extension. The bill would require the approvals to be in writing and to include specified information, including, among other things, a description of the project and a list of permits, agreements, consultations, or approvals waived by the review agencies’ authorization. This bill would further provide for an expedited authorization, as defined, issued pursuant to these requirements, which would waive the requirement that the covered wildfire mitigation project comply with statutes, rules, regulations, and requirements, within the jurisdiction of boards, departments, commissions, offices, and agencies within the consolidated review agencies, except as provided. The expedited authorization would replace any other permit, agreement, or authorization required by state statutes, rules, regulations, and requirements that falls within the jurisdiction of boards, departments, commissions, offices, and agencies within the consolidated review agencies. The bill would require covered wildfire mitigation projects to be conducted in compliance with specified requirements and would impose a civil penalty not to exceed $10,000 for each intentional, knowing, or negligent violation, as provided. The bill would require covered wildfire mitigation projects to be limited in project size based on the type of project, as specified, and completed within 5 years, for prescribed fire projects, or 2 years, for all other projects, of approval by the consolidated review agencies. The bill would further require CAL-FIRE to provide a cost-benefit analysis to estimate a project’s return on investment for risk reduction or an explanation of why an estimate could not be assigned for each department state-funded grant project. This bill would specify that the authority to issuance expedited authorizations becomes inoperative on January 1, 2029. This bill would provide that the above-described provisions do not preclude compliance with applicable local and federal statutes, rules, and regulations. This bill would also require, on or before July 1, 2028, the consolidated review agencies to report to the Legislature on, among other required things, the implementation of all wildfire mitigation projects that were permitted pursuant to the above-described provisions, as provided. This bill would repeal the above provisions on January 1, 2034. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a lead agency, as defined, to prepare, or cause to be prepared, and certify the completion of, an environmental impact report (EIR) on a project that it proposes to carry out or approve that may have a significant effect on the environment or to adopt a negative declaration if it finds that the project will not have that effect. CEQA also requires a lead agency to prepare a mitigated negative declaration for a project that may have a significant effect on the environment if revisions in the project would avoid or mitigate that effect and there is no substantial evidence that the project, as revised, would have a significant effect on the environment. CEQA authorizes the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency to certify a regulatory program that meets specified requirements as a certified regulatory program. For actions taken under a certified regulatory program, CEQA exempts those actions from certain of its provisions. Existing law authorizes the Director of the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to enter into an agreement for prescribed burning or other hazardous fuel reduction with any person to conduct prescribed burning operations and joint prescribed burning operations that serve the public interest and are beneficial to the state. Existing law requires, to the extent feasible, that the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Vegetation Treatment Program Programmatic Environmental Impact Report serve as the programmatic environmental document for prescribed fires initiated by a third party for a public purpose, as provided. This bill would require the board to develop the Nontimber Vegetation Management Program for nontimber vegetation management activities that are not subject to specified forest practice rules for permitting of activities on local, nonfederal, private, and state-owned lands. The bill would authorize an eligible entity proposing to conduct those vegetation management activities to seek authorization under the program. The bill would require the board, on or before July 1, 2028, to adopt emergency regulations for the program, as provided, that qualifies for certification by the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency as a certified regulatory program under CEQA and would require the board to submit those emergency regulations to the secretary for review and certification. The bill would require the board, in developing the emergency regulations to conduct no fewer than 3 public meetings to receive public comments with one of those meetings occurring in southern California. The bill would require the board, following the adoption of the emergency regulations to adopt permanent regulations in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act before July 1, 2030. The bill would repeal these provisions on January 1, 2035. Digest Key Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: YES Local Program: NO Bill Text The people of the State of California do enact as follows: SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following: (a) Accelerating critical wildfire prevention projects, while at the same time protecting public health and the environment, is critical for climate resiliency as well as maintaining utility operations. (b) The California Earthquake Authority’s report, “Enhancing California’s Resiliency to Natural Catastrophes,” prepared pursuant to Chapter 119 of the Statutes of 2025 (Senate Bill 254), identifies the escalating risk and cost of catastrophic wildfires and calls for expanded community wildfire risk reduction, including streamlining environmental review and permitting for priority mitigation projects while maintaining appropriate environmental safeguards. (c) Catastrophic wildfire risk and damages arise from interacting factors, including climate-driven extreme conditions, accumulated fuels, development in high-risk areas, and a range of ignition sources, and that reducing wildfire risk requires urgent, coordinated mitigation actions by communities, public agencies, tribes, resource conservation districts, nongovernmental organizations, fire safe councils, utilities, and professional land managers. (d) To implement these risk-reduction priorities at the necessary pace and scale, it is necessary to enable the Secretaries of the Natural Resources Agency and for Environmental Protection to expedite eligible fuels reduction and ignition-risk reduction projects, conditioned on compliance with best management practices and measures in the Statewide Fuels Reduction Environmental Protection Plan to protect public health, water and air quality, cultural resources, and sensitive species and habitats. (e) Accelerating wildfire risk reduction should incentivize vegetation management methods that effectively achieve wildfire risk reduction objectives while minimizing unnecessary impacts to water quality, soil health, ecosystem resilience, wildlife, public health, and community health. SEC. 2. Chapter 1.8 (commencing with Section 4240) is added to Part 2 of Division 4 of the Public Resources Code, to read: CHAPTER 1.8. Wildfire Mitigation Projects: Consolidated and Expedited Review 4240. For purposes of this chapter, all of the following definitions apply: (a) “Consolidated review agencies” means the Natural Resources Agency in coordination with the California Environmental Protection Agency to provide coordinated environmental and regulatory review of covered wildfire mitigation projects. (b) (1) “Covered wildfire mitigation project” means any one of the following categories of activities undertaken for the purpose of reducing wildfire risk: (A) Required by law. (B) Identified in a utility’s wildfire mitigation plan or in a community wildfire preparedness plan or adopted by a local agency. (C) In a plan proposed by the department. (2) Activities that qualify as a covered wildfire mitigation project include any of the following: (A) Removal of hazardous, dead, or dying trees. (B) Removal of vegetation for the creation of strategic fuel breaks. A fuel break in chaparral, shrubland, grassland, and coastal sage scrub lands where less flammable or native vegetation is removed and replaced with ignition-prone or nonnative vegetation shall not be permissible pursuant to this chapter. Fuel break treatments shall not exceed 300 feet in width. (C) Removal of vegetation for community defensible space of up to 200 feet from a structure. (D) Removal of vegetation along roadways, highways, and freeways up to 100 feet, as measured from the center line of the roadway, for a public roadway identified as an egress and evacuation route for a community for the creation of safer ingress and egress routes for the public and first responders and to reduce roadside ignitions. (E) Removal or modification of vegetation in forests that create more fire-resilient conditions. (F) Removal of nonnative vegetation in chaparral, shrubland, grassland, and coastal sage scrub ecosystems. (G) Maintenance of previously established fuel breaks. (H) Removal of vegetation around electrical utility lines consistent with Section 4293, poles consistent with Section 4292, and rights-of-way consistent with General Order 95 or FAC-003-5 Transmission Vegetation Management of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to reduce the risk of wildfire. (I) Notwithstanding any plan inclusion, prescribed or cultural fire in ecosystems with a fire deficit, excluding coastal sage scrub and chaparral communities. (c) A project that includes the use of a pesticide, as defined in Section 12753 of the Food and Agricultural Code, does not qualify as a covered wildfire mitigation project for the purposes of this chapter. (d) Division 13 (commencing with Section 21000) does not apply to a covered wildfire mitigation project authorized pursuant to this chapter. (e) “Expedited authorization” means a written decision by the Secretary for Environmental Protection or the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency authorizing a covered wildfire mitigation project and requiring the covered wildfire mitigation project to comply with the State Environmental Protection Plan, the issuance of which waives the requirements that the covered wildfire mitigation project comply with state statutes, rules, regulations, and requirements within the jurisdiction of the boards, departments, commissions, offices, and agencies within the consolidated review agencies, to the extent necessary and for the purpose of expediting a covered wildfire mitigation project, and replaces any other permit, agreement, or authorization required or authorized by state statutes, rules, regulations, and requirements that fall within the jurisdiction of those boards, departments, commissions, offices, and agencies, including any permitting authority delegated to local governments by those entities, except as provided in paragraph (2) of subdivision (f) of Section 4241. (f) “Project review team” means an interdisciplinary team led by the department, including, but not limited to, representatives from the appropriate regional water quality control board, the State Water Resources Control Board, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the California Geological Survey, the California Coastal Commission, the Department of Conservation, and the Department of Parks and Recreation, as applicable. Further, “project review team” refers to a team that is tasked with evaluating proposed covered wildfire mitigation projects and assisting the consolidated review agencies in the determination of project conformance with the State Environmental Protection Plan. (g) “State Environmental Protection Plan” means the Statewide Fuels Reduction Environmental Protection Plan (EPP), issued December 2025, and any subsequent updates. 4241. (a) Without limiting any other statutory exemption or categorical exemption, and notwithstanding any other law, and consistent with Executive Order No. N-38-25, any state-level environmental and resource permits, approvals, consultations, and reviews required for a covered wildfire mitigation project shall be consolidated into a single coordinated review by a project review team and administered jointly by the consolidated review agencies. (b) (1) Timber operations, as defined in Section 4527, shall comply with the Z’berg-Nejedly Forest Practice Act of 1973 (Chapter 8 (commencing with Section 4511)) and the Forest Practice Rules (Chapter 4 (com [Text truncated for display. Full text available on Congress.gov.]