Existing law establishes the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and prescribes the functions and duties of the conservancy with regard to the preservation of specified lands in the Sierra Nevada Region, as defined. Existing law requires the conservancy to make an annual report to the Legislature and the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency regarding expenditures, land management costs, and administrative costs.

This bill would modify the definition of the Sierra Nevada Region to expand the boundary of the conservancy. The bill would also require the conservancy to include, in its report regarding expenditures, land management costs, and administrative costs for the year 2029, a report that describes and assesses the impacts and outcomes of the conservancys recent expansion in the Counties of Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, and Trinity on the conservancy as a whole and on the areas within those counties.

Existing law establishes the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and prescribes the functions and duties of the conservancy with regard to the preservation of specified lands in the Sierra Nevada Region, as defined.

This bill would modify the definition of the Sierra Nevada Region to expand the boundary of the conservancy.

SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

Senator Anthony Portantino, Chair

2023 - 2024 Regular Session

SB 841 (Dahle) - Sierra Nevada Conservancy: Sierra Nevada Region: definition: annual report

Bill Summary:

This bill would expand the boundaries of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) to include all of Modoc and Siskiyou Counties, and would require SNC to report on the impacts of recent expansions.

Fiscal Impact:

• Unknown but potentially significant cost pressure (bond funds or General Fund) to fund new projects or expand existing projects in the additional SNC territory.
• SNC estimates ongoing costs of about $700,000 (General Fund) and five positions to provide support to the newly added territory and cover increases in workload that may result from expanded partnerships and projects. In addition, SNC estimates one-time costs of $170,000 for an assessment of the proposed expansion area; intensive relationship-building efforts; equipment for new staff; and updates to communications materials and business materials. SNC also anticipates it would need at least a 15% increase in local assistance funding to ensure that it can serve the proposed expansion area while also maintaining its current level of service in its existing region.
• To the extent that this bill improves the state’s management of source watersheds and forest health, unknown but potentially significant savings due to reduced risk of severe wildfire, invasive species and pests, and degradation to water supply and quality.

Background:

The Sierra Nevada is a region of global, national, and statewide significance. The Sierra Nevada covers 25 million acres (25 percent of California’s land area) and is the source of more than 60 percent of California’s developed drinking and irrigation water. In addition, Sierra forests contain almost 50 percent of the state’s total aboveground forest carbon (more than any other region or sector) and the region sustains 60 percent of California’s animal species and almost half of its plant species. The Sierra also supplies up to half of California’s annual timber yield and produces 70 percent of the state's hydroelectric power, meeting 15 percent of the state's overall energy needs. Additionally, this region is home to 600,000 residents and supports 50 million recreation visit-days per year.

The Sierra Nevada Conservancy. Existing law establishes SNC to work in collaboration and cooperation with local governments and interested parties for multiple purposes, including to reduce the risk of natural disasters, such as wildfires; protect, conserve, and restore the region’s physical, cultural, archaeological, historical, and living resources; and protect and improve water and air quality. SNC has six area representatives that cover its 25 million acre region and provide technical assistance, manage grant projects, and participate in the collaboratives that are essential to queueing up forest and watershed health, recreation and tourism, land conservation and climate resiliency work throughout the Sierra Nevada region.

Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program (WIP). In 2015, SNC launched WIP to pull partners from federal, state, county, local, and private sectors together to create new approaches to address environmental and economic threats to the Sierra Nevada. AB 2849 (Stone 2018) codified this program.

Proposition 68 (2018) provided a total of $55 million for WIP. Of this total, about $16 million remains available for appropriation for projects.

The Governor’s 2020-21 budget proposal includes one-time General Fund augmentations of $20 million in 2020-21 and $50 million in 2021-22 for WIP as part of its wildfire resilience package. According to the LAO, the administration reports that it likely would use a portion of the funding for planning efforts, consistent with existing WIP programs. However, most of the funds would support projects with a focus on large landscape-level benefits, as well as protection of critical infrastructure and the wildland-urban interface (WUI)—areas with development interspersed with or in close proximity to forests. SNC further reports that it would allocate current-year funding to projects it already has identified as being high priority and shovel-ready, while the budget-year funding would support a competitive grant program. Projects would be completed by 2028.

Proposed Law:

This bill would (1) expand SNC’s boundary to include all of Modoc and Siskiyou Counties, and (2) require SNC to include, in its report regarding expenditures, land management costs, and administrative costs for the year 2029, a report on the impacts and outcomes of the two expansions on SNC as a whole and on the added areas.

This bill would increase the size of SNC by over 4 million acres for a new total of 31,017,279 acres, or almost 30 percent of the state. This proposed expansion of SNC’s territory is significantly larger than the last expansion authorized in SB 208, which added a little over 1.3 million acres.

Related Legislation:

SB 208 (Dahle, Chapter 182, Statutes of 2021) expanded SNC’s boundaries and directed SNC to recommend legislation in 2022 to make changes to the name of the conservancy and board as well as the structure of the regions, subregions, and board to align with the expansion.

Staff Comments:

Cost pressure created by territory expansion. Expanding SNC boundaries would create cost pressure to fund new projects and expand existing projects into the additional territory. SNC funding comes primarily from bonds, which are limited, although it has recently received some General Fund monies. Additional resource demands could further constrain limited funding.

However, additional funding has been provided in recent years and may also be available in the future. The table below shows funding for conservancies to implement projects in high fire risk regions, which includes many SNC programs and activities.

Source: Department of Finance.

It is worth noting that the US Forest Service dedicated the Klamath River Basin as one of five areas in California that will received increased funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act in order to expand efforts to reduce wildfire risk across the western US. It is unclear, however, exactly how much funding this area will received.

Potential savings from improved source watershed and forest management. Source watersheds are critical to the state’s water supply and quality, wildfire risk mitigation, habitat and biodiversity, and forest carbon sequestration. To the extent that this bill improves the state’s management of source watersheds and forest health, it could result in unknown but potentially significant savings due to reduced risk of catastrophic wildfire, invasive species and pests, and degradation to water supply and quality.

For example, increasing the number of large-scale forest health projects could result in savings from reduced spending on emergency fire suppression. The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) spends roughly $1 billion annually (General Fund) on “emergency fire suppression” – additional fire suppression resources needed when a fire continues to spread after the “initial attack” or about the first 24 hours. Fires that are not contained during initial attack can become catastrophic wildfires responsible for extensive property and environmental damage as well as enormous releases of greenhouse gases. These fires are extremely resource-intensive to contain. Fires occurring in forests that have undergone fuels treatment or other forest health projects are more likely to be contained during initial attack.

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SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES AND WATER

Senator Dave Min, Chair

2023 - 2024 Regular

Bill No: SB Hearing Date: April 11, 2023

Subject: Sierra Nevada Conservancy: Sierra Nevada Region: definition

BACKGROUND AND EXISTING LAW

Existing law

1. Establishes the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) to work in collaboration and cooperation with local governments and interested parties for multiple purposes, including to reduce the risk of natural disasters, such as wildfires; to protect, conserve, and restore the region’s physical, cultural, archaeological, historical, and living resources; and to protect and improve water and air quality. Public Resources Code (PRC) §§33300 et seq.
2. Defines the “Sierra Nevada Region” or “region” to mean the area lying within the Counties of Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Lassen, Madera, Mariposa, Modoc, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity, Tulare, Tuolumne, and Yuba, as specifically described. This region excludes the Lake Tahoe region included within the California Tahoe Conservancy’s jurisdiction or the San Joaquin River Parkway within the jurisdiction of the San Joaquin River Conservancy. PRC §33302.
3. Divides SNC into six subregions, as follows (PRC §33302):
   1. North Sierra subregion, comprising the counties of Lassen, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, and Trinity.
   2. North central Sierra subregion, comprising the counties of Butte, Plumas, Sierra, and Tehama.
   3. Central Sierra subregion, comprising the counties of El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, and Yuba.
   4. South central Sierra subregion, comprising the counties of Amador, Calaveras, Mariposa, and Tuolumne.
   5. East Sierra subregion, comprising the counties of Alpine, Inyo, and Mono.
   6. South Sierra subregion, comprising the counties of Fresno, Kern, Madera, and Tulare.

Background

The Sierra Nevada is a region of global, national, and statewide significance. The Sierra Nevada covers 25 million acres (25 percent of California’s land area) and is the source of more than 60 percent of California’s developed drinking and irrigation water. In addition, Sierra forests contain almost 50 percent of the state’s total aboveground forest carbon (more than any other region or sector) and the region sustains 60 percent of California’s animal species and almost half of its plant species. The Sierra also supplies up to half of California’s annual timber yield and produces 70 percent of the state's hydroelectric power, meeting 15 percent of the state's overall energy needs. Additionally, this region is home to 600,000 residents and supports 50 million recreation visit-days per year.

SB 208 (Dahle, Chapter 182, Statutes of 2021) expanded SNC’s boundaries to add sections of the Pit watershed and the Trinity, Upper Sacramento, and McCloud watersheds. This added 490,094 acres of Shasta County, 117,248 acres of Trinity County, and 733,266 acres of Siskiyou County to SNC’s service area, bringing SNC’s total area to 26,937,668 acres. This placed all the upper-forested watersheds that feed the California State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project within SNC’s service area. In addition, the addition of Siskiyou and Trinity counties increased the number of counties in the region from all or part of 22 counties to all or part of 24 counties. SB 208 also made conforming changes to add Siskiyou and Trinity Counties to the “North Sierra subregion.”

PROPOSED LAW

This bill would expand SNC’s boundary to include all of Modoc and Siskiyou Counties.

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT

According to the author, “I’m pleased to be adding all of Siskiyou and Modoc Counties under the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. The conservancy has a superior reputation for proper management of one of states most important resources, our headwaters. By having all these headwaters under one local agency, it will give more opportunities to expand important forest management projects as well as meadow restoration projects to ensure that we continue to have healthy forests and a robust headwaters system to ensure all Californian’s have fresh clean water to drink and safe forests to visit.”

According to the Modoc Nation, its traditional homelands are included in the areas proposed for addition to SNC’s territory. This nation supports the bill in an effort to “begin new partnerships to bring additional resources to bear in the historic effort to reestablish ourselves in caring for the lands our ancestors stewarded since time immemorial.”

According to the Western Rivers Conservancy, a nonprofit conservation organization that has worked extensively in the Klamath watershed, a section of which would be added to SNC’s territory by this bill, “SB 841 will help us continue to work in the upper watershed, protecting and enhancing resources in the region for the benefit of fish, wildlife, and people.”

According to the California Deer Association (CDA), “In early 2023, the Klamath River Basin was identified as a priority landscape, adding an additional ten million acres to efforts addressing critical infrastructure, community protection, and forest resilience that is at risk to catastrophic wildfire. Recently, the upper Klamath River Basin has been experiencing frequent high-severity fire events that devastate communities, degrade wildlife habitat and watershed health, and damage the overall ecosystem. If this trend persists in conjunction with lack of funding resources and emphasis on this region, these high severity post-fire landscapes will continue to diminish slope stability, increase sediment transport to waterways, decrease carbon sequestration, increase non-native plant species introduction and spread, and damage scenic quality of forested landscapes. CDA recognizes that SNC has been a critical source of funding across California to restore structure, function, and resiliency to ecosystems and expanding the SNC boundary will also benefit an additional 14 DWR severely disadvantaged communities, and 2 disadvantaged communities, if approved. CDA believes that SNC funding will have long-lasting positive effects in the Klamath River Basin and fully supports SNC developing to encompass the remainder of Siskiyou and Modoc County.”

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION

None received.

COMMENTS

The need for the bill. According to materials provided by the author, “California forests and watersheds are at a critical point. Ongoing drought, tree mortality, low snowpack, and a century of fire suppression, have led to an increase in large, high severity wildfires. This measure will expand the region of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy to add the upper watershed areas of the Klamath River in Siskiyou County and Modoc County. This area is of critical natural and cultural value to the State of California. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy can service the new areas by increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration through its Watershed Improvement Program (WIP), a crucial program to ensure the resilience of the natural resources of these watersheds and the communities that depend on them…”

Further, the author notes that “SB 841 will remove jurisdictional barriers, and provide both Siskiyou and Modoc Counties more equitable access to State resources through the Sierra Nevada Conservancy for county-wide planning and implementation of critical watershed improvements; cross-jurisdictional collaboration; establish co-stewardship plans with Tribes; preserving working landscapes; reducing the risk of wildfire; assisting the regional stewardship economy; providing increased outdoor recreation access and opportunity in the region; and protecting, conserving, and restoring the region's physical, cultural, archaeological, historical, and living resources.”

How much land would the bill add to SNC’s territory? Currently, SNC’s defined territory encompasses 26,937,668 acres. This territory includes sections of Modoc and Siskiyou Counties, following the boundaries of certain source watersheds. This bill would add the remaining portions of both counties to SNC’s territory, including 3,328,857 acres of Siskiyou County and 750,754 acres of Modoc County. This would increase the size of SNC by over 4 million acres for a new total of 31,017,279 acres, or almost 30 percent of the state. This proposed expansion of SNC’s territory is significantly larger than the last expansion authorized in SB 208 (Dahle, Chapter 182, Statutes of 2021), which added a little over 1.3 million acres.

The Klamath River Basin. This bill would add parts of the Klamath River watershed located in Siskiyou and Modoc Counties into SNC’s territory. The headwaters of the Klamath River originate in Oregon and flow through the Cascade Mountain Range in northern California to the Pacific Ocean, ending at the unincorporated, rural census-designated place of Klamath along the California coast in Del Norte County. The river totals approximately 263 miles in length and drains a basin encompassing 12,000 square miles. The Klamath Basin has long been celebrated for its lakes, streams, forests, hunting, fishing, and agriculture. The Klamath River was once the third largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast.

In a letter of support for the bill, the Siskiyou Resource Conservation District notes that the upper Klamath River basin offers a diverse range of ecosystems, including critical riverine habitat. The system supports three salmonid species, including Steelhead trout, Chinook salmon, and Coho salmon (which is the largest cohort of state and federally threatened wild Coho salmon in California). Historically, anadromous fish populations supported important commercial, recreational, and tribal fisheries. However, many of these anadromous fish populations in the Klamath River have declined substantially in abundance.

Significant lengths of the Klamath River and its tributaries have been disturbed by historical land use and resource management practices. These include pervasive logging and mining operations, large-scale beaver removal and water diversion development, as well as the conversion of bottomlands to agricultural operations, resulting in channel simplification and incision along the main stem of the river. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, restoration of the river will require strong partnerships and collaboration between agencies and stakeholders throughout the basin. If parts of the Klamath River watershed are added to SNC’s territory, as proposed by this bill, SNC may be able to add value to the region’s restoration efforts.

This bill could constrain limited funding. SNC funding comes primarily from bonds, which are limited, although it has recently received some General Fund monies. Adding new territory could create new budget pressures and increase competition for already limited funding. It would reduce how much the SNC spends per acre, on average, unless the Legislature increased funding for this conservancy. SNC may be able to fund projects in the new territory under the Watershed Improvement Program. Further, it is worth noting that the US Forest Service dedicated the Klamath River Basin as one of five areas in California that will received increased funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act in order to expand efforts to reduce wildfire risk across the western US. It is unclear, however, exactly how much funding this area will received. The Senate Appropriations Committee may consider these issues in more depth.

Committee amendment. Given the significant growth proposed by this bill and in combination with SB 208 (Dahle, Chapter 182, Statutes of 2021) of SNC’s territory, over 5.4 million acres between the two bills in a two year period if this bill were approved, the Committee may wish to consider amending this bill to require SNC to report on the impacts and outcomes of the two expansions on SNC as a whole and on the added areas. See Amendments.

Connection to SB 39 (Laird, 2023). SB 39 (Laird, 2023), which is currently pending before the Senate Appropriations Committee, would rename and revise SNC’s six subregions to include four counties per subregion, as follows:

• Northwest: Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity
• Northeast: Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Sierra
• North central: Butte, Nevada, Placer, Yuba
• South central: Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Tuolumne
• Southeast: Alpine, Inyo, Kern, Mono
• Southwest: Fresno, Madera, Mariposa, Tulare

The map below, prepared by SNC, shows the proposed subregions in SB 39. Because SNC’s existing territory already includes parts of Modoc and Siskiyou Counties and this bill would only add the remainder of those counties to its territory, SB 841 would not require further revisions to SNC’s subregions or governing board beyond what SB 39 proposes.

Local support. Neither Modoc County nor Siskiyou County have submitted letters of support for this bill, yet. However, Siskiyou County adopted Resolution No. 23-11 on January 17, 2023, supporting legislation to the bill’s effect, as did Modoc County on January 10, 2023, via Resolution No. 2023-2.

Prior legislation.

SB 208 (Dahle, Chapter 182, Statutes of 2021) expanded SNC’s boundaries and directed SNC to recommend legislation in 2022 to make changes to the name of the conservancy and board as well as the structure of the regions, subregions, and board to align with the expansion.

SUGGESTED AMENDMENTS:

Add new section 2 to the bill, as follows:

SEC. 2. Section 33350 of the Public Resources Code is amended to read:

33350. (a) The conservancy shall make an annual report to the Legislature and the Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency regarding expenditures, land management costs, and administrative costs.

(b) In its report for the year 2029, the conservancy shall include a report that describes and assesses the impacts and outcomes of the recent expansions in the Counties of Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, and Trinity on the conservancy as a whole and on the areas within those counties.

(c) This section shall become operative on January 1, 2027.

SUPPORT

American Whitewater

California Association of Resource Conservation Districts

California Deer Association

College of Siskiyous

FWS Forestry Services California

Mid Klamath Watershed Council

Modoc Nation

Ore-Cal Resource Conservation and Development Council

RES

Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition

Siskiyou Outdoor Recreation Alliance

Siskiyou Resource Conservation District

Western Rivers Conservancy

OPPOSITION

None Received

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