Zone 0 Proposed Guidelines and Our Concerns for Brentwood

AB3074, the 2020 California bill on defensible space and ember resistant Zone 0, is now being finalized with onerous mandates that we believe will have a very significant negative impact upon you, your property and your entire neighborhood of which you should be aware.

Let us first preface this with our firm and unwavering commitment to fire safety. In February BHA invited renowned fire ecologist Jon Keeley PHD to speak. Dr. Keeley is the foremost expert on fire ecology as the senior scientist at U.S. Geological Survey and professor at UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability as well as author on 400+ peer reviewed journal articles on fire ecology. His presentation has greatly helped to inform our thinking on fire safety specifically as it pertains to the role of the vegetation surrounding your home.

At the moment the legislation being formulated by a committee comprised of the insurance industry, State forestry and fire fighters appears to be very focused upon wildfires such as Paradise rather than urban fires such as we saw in the Palisades where the homes were the fuel for the fire not the vegetation. The interpretation and implementation of fire clearance zones by the above committee will result in the loss of almost all of the privacy hedges that separate our homes as well as those hedges that act as an important buffer on busy streets. Furthermore vegetation acts as an important ember catching buffer that can save your home. (See ember catching hedge in photo below).

While the zone nearest your home is very important to maintain in terms of removing or trimming vegetation in direct contact with your home and clearing all dead and flammable materials as originally intended in AB3074 what has evolved is a complete hard scape zone with the potential of extension to an additional ten feet and very aggressive clearing beyond. The zone going out to 30 feet from your home may have a height limit of TWO feet for all vegetation—-a guarantee that most hedges except on the largest lots will be outlawed. Again, we are very committed to fire safety but do not believe this is the best route for making us all safer and furthermore is not informed by the science. To date there has been no environmental review (EIR).

Get out your measuring tape to understand what these new rules might mean for you. These mandates will dramatically change our neighborhood into a vast expanse of concrete. We will lose privacy, aesthetics, plant cooling/air purifying and nature and accordingly property value—without an increase in fire safety.

You can learn more about the proposed guidelines with the AB3074 Fact Sheet and by viewing the BHA April 15 Presentation.

NOW IS THE TIME TO SPEAK UP. PLEASE USE THE LINK BELOW TO SEND A PRE-FILLED EMAIL TO THE BOARD OF FORESTRY DURING PUBLIC COMMENT.