Burning down the house: California’s fire insurance crisis

California residents have become accustomed to historically large wildfires occurring at an astonishing pace, with eight of the ten largest fires ever recorded in California occurring in the last 10 years. The increasing frequency and destructiveness of wildfires has strained fire insurance systems to a near breaking point, and rural communities are often the most impacted by both wildfires and rising insurance costs.

Fire danger sign on scorched ground outside Klamath. Image source: National Interagency Fire Center

A primer on California’s FAIR Plan

California’s FAIR Plan, commonly referred to as the “insurer of last resort,” was created by the California Legislature in 1968 to act as a temporary safety net for homeowners who were unable to find home insurance from regular providers. Unlike a typical home insurance plan, the FAIR Plan only covers fire damage to structures, not household goods or personal liability. Contrary to public perception, the FAIR Plan is not a state funded insurer. The FAIR Plan is instead a state managed insurance pool comprised of all private insurers licensed to conduct business in California.

When FAIR Plan premiums fail to cover their exposure, the California Insurance Commissioner may levy assessments of up to a total of $1 billion per year (gross, not per insurer) against private insurers based on the market share of these insurers. Ostensibly, private insurers are not permitted to pass the costs of these assessments along to their ratepayers without approval from the Insurance Commissioner.

Trends in FAIR Plan usage

FAIR Plan usage has grown significantly in recent years. In 2009, only 7% of California ZIP codes had FAIR Plan policies that accounted for more than 10% of policies in that ZIP code. By 2022, this was true of 22% of California ZIP codes. FAIR Plan usage tends to be much higher in rural areas, as demonstrated by the below map, published by Avery Bick and Nam Nguyen in this post.



To select a few extreme examples from this map, one ZIP code located in Placer County where the largest community, Foresthill, has a population of 1692, has a FAIR Plan rate of 69.625%. Another ZIP code in Orange county has a FAIR Plan rate of 79.67%, and their largest community, Silverado, has a population of only 932.

While the FAIR Plan was not intended to insure such a large proportion of California’s residents, the reason why that trend is unfolding is quite clear: private insurers are fleeing the state as fast as they can. State Farm (still the largest insurer in California) and Allstate stopped writing new homeowner fire policies in 2022. A series of other large insurers left the state in the following years, with Nationwide, Farmers, Travelers, Tokio, and American National all ceasing to write new policies from 2023-2025.

As FAIR Plan usage has expanded, premiums for FAIR Plan policies have also increased significantly, with some consumers seeing rate increases (rarely) as high as 300% in a single year. While the average FAIR Plan policy costs around $3,200 per year, it is common for policies to cost more than $10,000 per year in high fire risk areas.

Why has rural California been hit so hard by the insurance crisis?

The reason that this crisis has hit rural California particularly hard is relatively intuitive. As phrased by Prof. Minnich of UC Riverside, “People want to live with nature, but they don’t recognize that nature is explosively flammable.”

Housing in wildland urban interface (WUI) areas is much more prone to fire damage. Defined commonly as an area where urban development mingles with undeveloped wildland vegetation, WUI overlaps significantly with areas typically considered rural, but it may also include development on the outskirts of urban centers.

Residential development in WUI is the fastest growing land use type in the United States, with the number of houses in WUI increasing by 46% from 1990 to 2020. California has seen the greatest increase of houses in WUI, with one third of California households in WUI as of 2020. Note the striking resemblance that the below map of change in WUI in California, published by Prof. Miriam Greenberg in this article, bears to the above map of FAIR Plan coverage rates.



The increasing number of houses in high fire risk areas coupled with more frequent and destructive fires have proved a hurdle that insurers are often unable to clear without substantial premium increases.

The future of the FAIR Plan

Increased reliance on the FAIR Plan, along with massive exposure from the Palisades and Eaton fires has led Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to levy the first assessment against FAIR Plan member companies since 1994. The assessment is for the full $1 billion allowed. 

Additionally, Commissioner Lara mandated the use of wildfire catastrophe models in FAIR Plan's most recent rate increase application. The rate increase currently proposed would average a 35.8% increase, with about half of policyholders seeing an increase between 40% and 50%.

In addition to these efforts by the Department of Insurance, a variety of legislative measures have been passed or proposed to address California's insurance crisis. One of the most notable among these is Assemblymember Lisa Calderon's (D, 56th District) AB 1680, which seeks to overhaul the FAIR Plan in a number of ways, perhaps most significantly by extending FAIR Plan coverage to water damage, personal injury liability, and other coverages typical of standard home insurance policies. 

Conclusions

These and other measures taken by California in response to the Palisades and Eaton fire make clear that policymakers know action is needed, but there is little doubt that they are inadequate. While efforts to mitigate the costs to FAIR Plan policyholders are important, California's insurance crisis is inherent in our homebuilding choices and lack of adequate wildfire hardening. As previous blog posts have noted, wildfire prevention efforts in rural areas of California are severely underfunded. Without serious efforts to mitigate wildfire risk, California is unlikely to halt the exodus of private insurers. 

If Tulare Lake is back to stay, what will it mean for those indigenous to the area? Plus other stories from the aftermath of California's historic winter rainfall

Tulare Lake has been much in the news in recent months.  The lake is that massive body of water in California's Central Valley that historically existed but then disappeared at the hands of land management and "progress" only to appear again this winter and spring in the wake of record rainfall and subsequent snowmelt from the Sierras.  Much of the most recent coverage (such as here and here) focuses on the Tachi-Yokut Tribe's historic links to the lake.  Here is an excerpt from an NPR story that gives a sense of the extraordinary place and its history, with Soreath Hok reporting:

HOK:  On a recent afternoon, about two dozen members of the Tachi Yokut tribe gather at the shore of Tulare Lake. Water stretches as far as the eye can see.

ROBERT JEFF: And what you see behind us now is Pa'ashi has reawakened.

HOK: Robert Jeff is the vice chairman of the tribe. Pa'ashi means big water, the Tachi Yokut name for the lake.

(SOUNDBITE OF RATTLES SHAKING)

HOK: Tribal members play rattles, clapsticks and sing as part of a ceremony to welcome it back.

KENNY BARRIOS: (Singing in Tachi).

HOK: Kenny Barrios is the tribe's cultural liaison. He wrote the song.

BARRIOS: That song said, we need our water. Thank you for bringing our water back.

HOK: The Tachi Yokut tribe once lived on these shores. The lake provided food, plants to build shelter and was the center of a trade route for tribes in the region. But today, the 1,200 members of the Tachi Yokut live a few miles away on a reservation called the Santa Rosa Rancheria. Now the community relies on a resort and casino as their main source of revenue. One paved road leads into the reservation, surrounded by flat, dry land. At the reservation's cultural center...

SHANA POWERS: These are baskets that have been repatriated to the tribe.

HOK: Cultural director Shana Powers shows off handmade baskets the tribe used to cook and fish when they still lived by the lake. They're made out of native plants and woven with intricate designs.

POWERS: This design right here - that is the goose design.

HOK: The geese that used to flock to the lake have special significance.

POWERS: They would come down in the winter. And that was, you know, the Yokut way of looking at prosperity. You know it's going to be a fat winter - you know, everybody's going to be doing good - based upon how the geese look.

HOK: By the mid-1800s, the Tachi Yokut tribe had been severely impacted by settlers. They killed many tribe members and introduced diseases that decimated the Tachi Yokut. Eventually, they were forced from their land, and the lake ultimately disappeared after water was diverted to clear space for crops and irrigate them.

This July 6, 2023 Los Angeles Times feature by Ian James is headlined, "Tulare Lake’s ghostly rebirth brings wonder — and hardship. Inside a community’s resilience."  An excerpt follows, also focusing on the history of indigenous people's use of the lake, which they were ultimately deprived of: 

Tens of thousands of Indigenous people lived and thrived around it. The Yokut tribes made their homes along the lakeshore and the rivers, and moved to higher ground when the lake swelled with runoff.

They built tule rafts and fished with spears and basket traps.

The arrival of Spanish colonizers, followed by fur trappers, gold miners and settlers, devastated the Yokuts. Many died from diseases, and the state government promoted the extermination of Native people with militia campaigns and bounties.

Driven from their lands, the surviving Yokuts ended up living on reservations or marginal lands that had little value to white farmers.

Several families were the first residents of the Santa Rosa Rancheria when the reservation was established in 1934 on 40 acres of farmland.

By that time, the rivers that fed Tulare Lake had been heavily diverted for agriculture. The lake dried up completely during a drought in 1898. And although the lake continued to return in wetter years, it was systematically drained in the early 20th century by a handful of farmers, among them cotton magnate J.G. Boswell.

When dams were built on the Kings, Kaweah, Tule and Kern rivers, the reduced flows enabled the lakebed to be farmed during all but the wettest years.

And here's a more recent Los Angeles Times story, this one from yesterday, "What’s in the mysterious waters of Tulare Lake? Contaminants, egrets and many unknowns."  This excerpt features a law enforcement dimension, though the story's focus is mostly ecological: 

As Tulare Lake reclaims its historic footprint in the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley, long-forgotten ecosystems have been revived.

The Times took a tour with the Kings County Sheriff’s Office, which purchased an airboat this summer for the purpose of patrolling the reborn lake.

“When this lake obviously appeared, it just added a whole new dimension to what we needed to be able to accomplish,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Nate Ferrier, standing on the lake’s southeast shore near Corcoran. Even months after Tulare Lake’s reemergence, he remains in awe of its size and presence. “I’ve driven up and down all these roads and dirt roads and levees, and to see this much water covering all this farmland, it’s … kind of like a biblical moment.”

While the sheriff’s office has boats deputies use to cut across the nearby Kings River, they needed something with a flat bottom because of all the junk floating in the lake, Ferrier said. A normal boat with propellers would likely get stuck, he said, so they purchased the airboat for about $95,000 and trained five deputies how to operate it.

Here and Now, from WBUR Boston, did this feature on the relationship between the Tachi-Yokut and Tulare Lake.  They also produced this piece on two journalists who kayaked from Tulare Lake to the San Francisco Bay.  One somewhat humorous part of the latter is when a Kings County Sheriff Deputy told the journalists they were trespassing (much of the lake covers private property, some of it previously cultivated).  The journalists responded by taking their kayak out and putting in again once they'd crossed into the neighboring county on their journey.   

A post about Tulare Lake from earlier this spring is here.

Also related to the storms this past winter and spring, California announced several weeks ago that it was sending $20 million in relief to Planada, a census-designated place in Merced County that suffered record flooding this past winter.  The story's subhead explains why state aid was necessary: "The undocumented status of many residents of Planada, east of Merced, meant they were ineligible for federal aid after winter storms ravaged their town."  Here's some further context: 

For the undocumented low-income workers whom California’s economy relies on, “there’s been just so many different major public emergencies, from Covid to catastrophic wildfires to smoke and drought, and now floods,” said Edward Flores, an associate professor of sociology at U.C. Merced who co-wrote the report. “It’s clear that this is a huge gap in the economic safety net for residents of California.”

Flooding impacts on rural Vermont

Though Vermont is known as a very rural state, I haven't seen much coverage of this week's flooding there that used the word "rural."  So I was happy (is that the right adjective?) to see this story from Vermont Digger, posted on July 13, that does just that.  The headline is "When you can’t get there from here: In rural areas, road closure updates hard to find."  The subhead is "From cardboard signs to Google Maps, information has been crowd-sourced and ad hoc."  Kristen Fountain reports, and the lede follows.

It was the talk of the porch at the Craftsbury General Store on Tuesday morning and inside the town office across the street: What was the best way, if there was one, of getting out of town?

Both locations were up and running on generators, though power was out. The noise drew neighbors like moths to light, seeking coffee and news.

Like many other small towns across the state, residents of Craftsbury and nearby towns — Glover, Greensboro, Hardwick, Woodbury and Wolcott among them —- woke to find that active flooding or major water damage had closed the usual travel routes along state roads. The conversation quickly turned to finding workarounds on the area’s network of local roads.

Those who arrived in cars offered up intel about which ones had deep standing water or were only partially washed out.

“It was definitely chaotic. A lot of people with a lot of information” were stopping by and calling, recalled Craftsbury Town Clerk Michelle Warren on Wednesday morning. Later, once power was restored for the senders, there were emails, too. “There were some roads we didn’t realize how bad it was until we saw pictures,” she said.

Officials in other towns posted lists of open and closed roads on their websites or Facebook pages and on Front Porch Forum groups, which worked to some degree.

Warren was grateful to have the help of a volunteer with geographic mapping experience on Tuesday to create a digital map where all that information could be recorded and shared via the town website. The tool has allowed her to update residents and travelers daily since then on where the town road crew and locals with excavators and dump trucks have made progress shoring up washouts.

One town that has been very much in the news in the wake of the flooding is Ludlow, population 773.  Here's some New York Times coverage with lots of photos of Ludlow, as well as other hard-hit towns in Central Vermont.  The lede for that story highlights familiar stereotypes of the region:

Vermont, a state known for peaceful green mountains, grazing cows and tidy covered bridges, is not often seen as a place where mudslides threaten highways, rivers churn with debris and murky, propane-fouled floodwaters fill downtown streets.

Another town getting a lot of attention in national coverage is Barre, population 8,000. 

Prior posts about Vermont are here, and this post in particular discusses the 2011 Vermont floods resulting from Tropical Storm Irene, as well as the historic 1927 flood.  

Three stories of loss out of rural northern New Mexico

Several national media outlets have recently reported out of the rural reaches of northern New Mexico.  I collect these stories, all of some sort of loss, in this post.  

Jeffrey Fleishman of the Los Angeles Times reported last month out of Espanola, New Mexico, population 10,526.  The headline is "Can this town save itself from fentanyl addiction? The race to turn around a threatened community."  Excerpts follow, with the first about the place: 

Sitting amid tribal lands straddling the Rio Grande, Española appears stranded between better known Santa Fe and Taos. More than a century ago, long before cartels trafficking fentanyl with nicknames like China White and Dance Fever crisscrossed New Mexico on Interstate 40 and Interstate 25, ranchers and farmers here loaded their wares on trains bound north and south in what was known as the Chili Line. That route ended decades ago; other small businesses and industries disappeared as well.  

Then there's this about the current crisis:  

Shoppers and workers drove past addicts roaming Riverside Drive, the main drag in this town of 10,500. Kids played in trailer parks. Contractors loaded pickups. Cars came and went from a methadone clinic. Men wearing hoodies and expectant gazes drifted toward a house with barred windows. They rustled pockets for cash. Others headed toward the marshes on the city’s fringes, where, as the morning frost lifted, Cristian Madrid-Estrada, a bearded man of 23, sat with a gun holstered on his hip at the Española Pathways Shelter [where he is the chief executive officer].

* * * 

Rallying voices are trying to fix this community under siege. But it’s unclear if the story of Española, where a quarter of the population is poor and the murals of the dead are painted on junction boxes, will be a narrative about how to save a town from addiction — or lose it. In a one-year period ending in June 2022, Rio Arriba County reported 50 fatal overdoses, giving it the highest rate in New Mexico. It was about four times the national rate of approximately 33 per 100,000.

Here's another quote from Madrid-Estrada: 

It’s insane how much has changed in the last year. It’s scary. We have generational drug use. Generational trauma. Half the kids I went to school with didn’t have parents. They were dead or in jail or gone. [But fentanyl] is a completely different animal. A whole new epidemic no one was prepared for.

The LA Times story also covers familiar rural issues, including lack of resources such as detox and addiction treatment.   

Then, a few weeks ago, Simon Romero reported for the New York Times on another loss--that region's dying Spanish dialect, one centuries old and linking back to the era of the Conquistadors.  The dateline is Questa, population 1742, and an excerpt follows: 

Even just a few decades ago, the New Mexican dialect remained at the forefront of Spanish-language media in the United States, featured on television programs like the nationally syndicated 1960s Val de la O variety show. Balladeers like Al Hurricane nurtured the dialect in their songs. But such fixtures, along with the dazzling array of Spanish-language newspapers that once flourished in northern New Mexico, have largely faded. 

Romero quotes Cynthia Rael-Vigil, 68, who runs a coffee shop in Questa and who traces her ancestry to a member of the "1598 expedition that claimed New Mexico as one of the Spanish Empire’s most remote domains."  

Our unique Spanish is at real risk of dying out... Once a treasure like this is lost, I don’t think we realize, it’s lost forever.

Referring to her 11-year-old grandson who speaks almost no Spanish of any dialect: 

He has no interest. Kids his age master the internet; that’s all in English. I sometimes wonder, did my generation not do our part to keep the language alive?

Romero links the language loss to the decline of places like Questa: 

[T]here are questions about whether the rural communities that nurtured New Mexican Spanish for centuries can themselves last much longer in the face of myriad economic, cultural and climate challenges.

* * * 

Economic forces have fueled an exodus from the aging northern villages made up of crumbling adobe homes. Other threats — such as the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history, which tore through the state’s Hispanic heartland a year ago.

And that's a great segue to the last of the three stories of loss, Alice Fordham's report for NPR about victims of last spring's Hermit's Peak Fire who have yet to see the compensation they've been promised.  That fire was started by a federal government controlled burn that, well, got out of control.  Here, Fordham interviews Antonia Roybal-Mack, a local attorney who is trying to help residents negotiate with the federal government:   

FORDHAM:  Because the fire began as escaped prescribed burns by a federal agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the federal government took responsibility, and Congress passed a law promising compensation. It appropriated nearly $4 billion. Roybal-Mack says she's been hired by hundreds of households and other entities like municipalities to put a number on their loss. But the claims process is complicated.

ROYBAL-MACK: We can't give our clients any certainty on this is what it is. This is how it looks. This is your path. This is what we expect to see happen.

FORDHAM: That's because the rules aren't finalized. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is running this compensation program. It issued interim regulations last year. But after hundreds of public comments raising concerns about things like a cap of 25% on the value of trees, the agency has no date for a final version.

ROYBAL-MACK: FEMA is saying trust us that we are going to do right by you, but we're not going to give you a rule, and we're not going to have a guidebook as to how we're all going to play this game.

So, there's talk of a possible lawsuit against the federal government, and the story closes with an implicit reference to rural lack of anonymity.  

ROYBAL-MACK: In the event we sue the federal government, we will have the evidence necessary to do that.

FORDHAM: She's from the county of Mora, which was hit hard by the fire. Her father's ranch burned. And as we ride around, she says there's some social pressure.

ROYBAL-MACK: If I screw this up, I can't go to church here anymore. And I really like to go to church in Mora [County].

Neglecting infrastructure that protects rural and farmworker communities (or, the curse of government's cost-benefit analysis)

Last week, the levee protecting the town of Pajaro, California from the Pajaro River failed amidst the tenth atmospheric river of the 2022-23 winter season.  The levee was built in 1949, and the Army Corps of Engineers knew it did not provide the level of protection it was initially designed to provide.  

Here's the lede from a March 12, 2023 Los Angeles Times story about the Pajaro disaster:  

Officials had known for decades that the Pajaro River levee that failed this weekend — flooding an entire migrant town and trapping scores of residents — was vulnerable but never prioritized repairs in part because they believed it did not make financial sense to protect the low-income area, interviews and records show.

“It was pretty much recognized by the early ‘60s that the levees were probably not adequate for the water that that system gets,” Stu Townsley, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ deputy district engineer for project management for the San Francisco region, told The Times on Sunday.

And despite having studied it on and off for years, in terms of “benefit-cost ratios,” it never penciled out, he said.

“It’s a low-income area. It’s largely farmworkers that live in the town of Pajaro,” Townsley said. “Therefore, you get basically Bay Area construction costs but the value of property isn’t all that high.”

This cost-benefit analysis is a recurring theme of spending on infrastructure, and it's one that disserves communities like Pajaro, an unincorporated community of just about 3000 residents that sits south of the river in Monterey County, while the city of Watsonville, population 50,000, sits north of the river in Santa Cruz County.   Indeed, some coverage of the Pajaro disaster has observed that Pajaro has effectively been sacrificed to help save Watsonville.  Though both are relatively poor and home to many farmworkers, Watsonville is home to a larger population and more commercial enterprises.  In other words, a Watsonville flood would be even more costly than the Pajaro flood is proving to be. 

Luis Alejo, chair of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors (and an alum of UC Davis Law), commented for the Los Angeles Times on why Pajaro had been neglected:

Low-income neighborhoods and communities have always historically been ignored by state and federal governments.

The story of Pajaro is exactly that. There was a lack of commitment by our federal and state governments. The residents have never felt they had that kind of support, knowing that the danger, the risk, has always been there.

Alejo further noted local communities like Pajaro and Watsonville are unable to pay their part of the millions it costs to improve levees, funds that are required to match the Army Corps' federal funding.  In fact, state funding had recently been secured to bolster the Pajaro levee, but it didn't come in time. 

In 2021, Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) authored a bill requiring the state to completely fund the [Pajaro River] project. This past fall, Laird and others held a ceremony celebrating the funding of the levee project.

“I said some version of ‘I hope to God it doesn’t rain before this gets done,’” he said.

Laird has worked for years to get funding to repair the system. He said he was a county staffer in 1995 when the river flooded and spent several nights at the fairgrounds “where many of the same families that are being evacuated this time.”

Today, several days after the Pajaro levee breach came this from KQED (the NPR affiliate in San Francisco), adding insult to injury for those impacted by the Pajaro flooding.  The report by Jeremiah Oetting reveals yet another betrayal of Pajaro:   

At a press conference in the flood-stricken Monterey County town of Pajaro on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom talked up a plan, paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and managed by United Way, to provide financial aid to farmworkers affected by floods and recent winter storms.

“There's not a state in America, not one state, no other state that does more for farmworkers than the state of California,” Newsom said. “I want folks to know … it's important to reinforce today, March 15th, the United Way was able to get $42 million from USDA, and they're starting to send out $600 checks for farmworkers, regardless of their immigration status.”

Newsom was not referring to a new program for farmworkers who are in financial straits due to recent flooding and severe weather. Rather, as KAZU, KQED and The California Newsroom have learned, Newsom was referring to a $42 million farmworker grant managed by United Way that was announced in October of 2022, and has nothing to do with economic hardships due to recent storms.

The existing $42 million grant was created to provide “a one-time direct relief payment of $600 … to qualifying frontline farm, grocery, and meatpacking workers for expenses incurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the USDA’s website.

Newsom’s office confirmed the $42 million he referred to in the press conference was in fact from the Farm and Food Workers Relief Grant Program, which is funded under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.

When asked whether waivers would be granted to flood-stricken farmworkers who do not meet the pandemic hardship requirements, USDA spokesperson Marissa Perry reiterated that the FFWR program was specific to those suffering COVID-related economic hardship.

You can read (or listen to) the rest of the story for more details, but the bottom line is that no new state or federal funds have been set aside to assist the victims of the Pajaro flood, who have not only lost their homes but will lose access to work in the coming months as fields must lie fallow for a period following the flood.  Further, the pandemic-related funds will not be distributed immediately, and they will not provide relief to all who need them.  

Postscript:  The San Jose Mercury News explains in this March 19 story how levees get funded.  The feature by Lisa M. Krieger and Harriett Blair Rowan features Hamilton City, population 1759, in Glenn County, an hour or so north of Sacramento.  

Like Pajaro, Hamilton City lives on the edge of a volatile river. Like Pajaro, its residents are largely low-income Latinos. Like Pajaro, it repeatedly sought federal funds to fix its levee, and was repeatedly rebuffed.

But there are differences, and that’s what saved Hamilton City. A group of six farmers, most of them now dead, started the construction campaign decades ago. It stayed unified and relentless in its focus. Volunteers, supported by homespun “Levee Festivals,” made 15 trips to Washington, D.C., knocking on doors in Congress to win the hearts of political heavyweights such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former Sen. Barbara Boxer and others.

*.* * 

But who deserves protection? While the responsibility to prevent floods lies with local communities, the funds to replace levees come largely from state and federal budgets. The government can’t afford to replace every levee. With fierce competition for money, projects must be prioritized.

To win funding, a town must prove that for every dollar spent on the project, there is at least a dollar of benefit. While the impacts of six factors — healthy and resilient ecosystems; sustainable economic development; floodplains; public safety; environmental justice; and watershed — are weighed, a community’s economic value weighs heavily, because it is easy to measure and compare projects, he said.

“The methodology measures: ‘How much is it going to cost? And how much are we going to save?’ ” said flood expert Scott Shapiro of the Sacramento law firm Downey Brand, who serves as general counsel for the Central Valley Flood Protection Board.

This cost-benefit approach is much more equitable than the historic tradition of “earmarking” funds, where powerful members of Congress steered money to their pet projects, he said. But it favors more prosperous areas.

All of this is helpful context for a news story from December 2022 when the first atmospheric river of the season hit California, striking the Central Valley particularly hard and flooding Wilton, an agricultural community south and southeast of Sacramento:   the standards for levees in rural areas like Wilton, where the Cosumnes River flooded, are lower than for those in urban places.  

Postscript:  Here is an LA Times story out of Allensworth, another disadvantaged California community facing flooding in light of the unseasonably rainy winter.  

A feel-good story out of far northern California: feeding cattle among record snow fall

NPR reports that the Coast Guard has been air dropping hay to parts of Humboldt County, population 136,000 in far northern California, where heavy snow fall has made it impossible for some ranchers to reach their herds.  

Here's a video clip of the operation from ABC News.   

The aftermath of the toxic spill in East Palestine, Ohio.

On February 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern train carrying a toxic chemical derailed in a small Ohio town of 4,718 called East Palestine. The chemical, namely vinyl chloride, was released into the immediate vicinity of the small town. To prevent a potentially deadly explosion, officials decided a few days later to burn off the rest of the vinyl chloride, causing a huge plume of black smoke that case a pall over area.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified four other chemicals (so far) that leaked into the air, water, and soil: butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, and isobutylene. If it isn't apparent from their names, all these chemicals are also toxic.

Despite all this, Ohio EPA and Ohio officials claim that the water in East Palestine is safe. Specifically, preliminary studies found that there was "no evidence of contamination." (If you want to look at the water samplings yourself, click here.) The federal EPA similarly claims that the air in East Palestine is safe, although an article published by the Yale School of Medicine warns more data still needs to be collected.

Residents are unconvinced about the safety of the water and air. Videos on TikTok show that the local waterways have a very concerning rainbow sheen. One refers to it as a "chemical shine." Some residents are nervous about adverse health effects, reporting new symptoms of rashes, sore throats, nausea, and headaches. Small farmers in the area are similarly concerned about the effects of the chemicals on their farms and livelihoods.

Fears of contamination have spread across the nation. Giant Eagle, a grocery chain, pulled bottled water off its shelves in five states including Ohio and Pennsylvania because the water was bottled 25 miles from the train derailment. Two Ohio high school basketball teams forfeited games rather than enter the region to play. The wastewater from firefighting efforts in East Palestine are being shipped to the Houston area in Texas, causing concern and uproar among Texas residents and politicians.

Humans aren't the only ones that have been harmed. USA Today reported that more than 43,000 fish and animals have been killed. (Officials say that none of the species were threatened or endangered if that makes you feel any better.) A lawsuit against Norfolk Southern claims that fish and animals are dying up to 20 miles from the derailment site.

So what is being done to remedy this environmental disaster or ensure it doesn't happen again? The short answer: not enough.

The EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to clean up the toxic spill and announced that it will fine the company $70,000 a day for everyday that it doesn't comply. It did so under its authority granted by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

If you're asking yourself: how in the world do you clean up liquid chemicals that have seeped into water supplies? Or, can they even clean it up before it causes more damage? Or even, who decides when the spill is cleaned up "enough?" These are great questions with depressingly unclear answers. The fact is that a massive amount of damage has been done, and a massive of damage is still to come.

Not to mention, what legal recourse is there for people who have already been exposed to the toxic chemicals? Unfortunately, toxic tort injury law is thorny and rarely results in compensation to individual victims. This is only exacerbated by the fact that we still don't know all the health effects of these toxic chemicals which could make it even more difficult to link them back to the East Palestine spill. While it's great that the EPA is attempting to hold Norfolk Southern accountable, it is unlikely that any benefits or remedies will make their way to residents most impacted by the spill.

In the bigger picture, it is highly problematic that almost all environmental laws in this country provide legal bases to stop destruction retroactively rather than enforce measures to prospectively prevent environmental catastrophe. As with the East Palestine spill, by the time an environmental disaster has started, it is usually too late.

I want to suggest legal reforms that prioritize forward-thinking stewardship and sustainability. We cannot continue glorifying profits and endless economic growth at the expense of our environment. We need to accept that some environmental risks are not worth it, and some freedoms need to be restricted. This toxic spill in East Palestine should be a wake up call for everyone, everywhere—not only in a relatively rural place.

Whether to re-build rural towns destroyed by wildfire

That is the subject of two stories in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, one focused on the economics and sustainability of doing so, the other framed--at least by its headline--in terms of rural climate change skeptics.  Both are written by Anita Chabria and Erika Smith.  The dateline for both stories is Greenville, California, which was destroyed by the Dixie fire last summer, an event I wrote about here and here.  

The thesis of the first column is pretty clear from the headline, "California spends billions rebuilding burned towns. The case for calling it quits."  Here's an excerpt: 

Most days, Ken Donnell steals a moment to gaze at the forested valley that surrounds this remote grid of streets in the mountains.

Before the Dixie fire came barreling through the Sierra Nevada last year, leveling everything here but a few houses, businesses and a school, this was a charming — if dying — Gold Rush-era town that about 800 people called home. Now, much of the charm is gone along with most of the residents, replaced by the skeletal remains of conifer trees and the deathly silence of block after empty block.

But even as Donnell has mourned, his mop of gray hair a fixture at community meetings on how to bring the town and the surrounding Plumas County valley back to life, he has become grateful.

It’s good that Greenville burned down when it did, he believes. Sooner rather than later. Because one day, in a not-so-distant future ravaged by climate change, many of Northern California’s far-flung rural towns — founded in another time and for another economy — might not get rebuilt at all.

Gone could be the political and public will to spend hundreds of millions of dollars — with Southern California taxpayers footing a big chunk of the bill — to replace homes and businesses for a small number of people, knowing that it’s all likely to burn down again as extreme heat and drought keep decimating unmanaged forests.

* * * 

Something must change.

What California is doing is dangerous and unsustainable, yet it continues down a well-trodden path, never hesitating to rally around people who have lost their livelihoods to a disaster, whether it be a mudslide or an earthquake — but especially a wildfire.

We are #ParadiseStrong, #SantaRosaStrong, #GrizzlyFlatsStrong and now #GreenvilleStrong. And we’ve spent billions in taxpayer dollars to prove it, along with ensuring that Pacific Gas & Electric, responsible for sparking far too many of these destructive conflagrations, is on the hook to pay billions more and to help rebuild.

The framing for the other column is even more provocative and political.  It is titled, "Rural climate skeptics are costing us time and money. Do we keep indulging them?" An excerpt follows:  

This is the part of the state where climate change has become a full-fledged existential threat. Sure, Southern California is prone to its fair share of disasters, but it is in Northern California where catastrophic wildfires aren’t just likely but are certain to destroy remote small towns for decades to come.

Greenville, which burned down in last year’s Dixie fire, should serve as a potent reminder of this risk. But maddeningly, the people who love living in these rural wildlands don’t see it that way. Instead, they look at it as just one more challenge to overcome, like spotty cellphone service and far-off grocery stores and hospitals.

It’s a belief so widespread, so divorced from the terrifying reality of climate change, that the rest of us in California can’t keep ignoring it. Doing so is simply costing too many lives and too much money, and wasting too much time. Soon, living in rural Northern California won’t be as safe, as sustainable or even as beautiful as it once was. The Dixie fire was just the beginning.

* * *

Why the Dixie fire was able to enter Greenville at all, tucked away in the Indian Valley about 100 miles northeast of Lake Tahoe, has become the stuff of conspiracy theories. But what it left behind is undisputed fact.

Streets of empty lots where homes and businesses once stood. A non-functioning sewer system. Soil so contaminated that millions of dollars in environmental restoration will be needed. Stumps where trees once provided shade from the sun.

* * * 

[One] line of thinking veers into grievance politics, insisting that catastrophic conflagrations wouldn’t be happening if left-leaning, big-city environmentalists hadn’t killed the logging industry in their right-leaning rural small towns. From there, the victimhood can morph into extremism, isolationism and paranoia.

Of course, the truth is a lot more complicated, given that forest mismanagement started with industrial logging of big — more resilient — trees from our forests. But these residents do have a point.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated for prescribed burns and mechanical thinning projects. And yet the treatment work is still being done far too slowly — an average of three to five years from conception to implementation. In some cases, it can take as many as seven years.

* * *

Are taxpayers who live in lower-risk cities willing to subsidize people who live in higher-risk rural towns, even if those people don’t have the means to live somewhere safer? And which is the fairest, most equitable use of public resources?

* * *

At some point, Californians must decide: Are we willing to pay more to maintain the status quo and rebuild every small rural town that burns down? Or do we want those who live there to pay more or even retreat to safer places?

* * *

For all of the anti-government, Trumpian rhetoric in Northern California about residents breaking away to form a right-wing State of Jefferson, most of their towns wouldn’t exist without massive public investment from liberal cities. And yet, if these same residents are forced to take on more financial responsibility for the risk of rural living, there will almost certainly be pushback.

Obviously, both of these columns are well worth reading.  Other prior posts on Legal Ruralism that mention Greenville or Plumas County can be found here.  

Postscript:  In the wake of Hurricane Ian, don't miss this column asking the same question about rebuilding in coastal Florida, some of which is highly urban.  

Big NYT feature acknowledges how government and corporate forces left Kentucky vulnerable to flooding

"How Coal Mining and Years of Neglect Left Kentucky Towns at the Mercy of Flooding" is the headline for a big story out of eastern Kentucky, crediting past exploitation of the region for its current vulnerability.  Here's an excerpt:  

For much of the last century, the country was powered by the labor of coal miners underneath the hills and mountains of southeastern Kentucky. But the landscape that was built to serve this work was fragile, leaving the people here extraordinarily vulnerable, especially after the coal industry shuttered so many of the mines and moved on. What remained were modest, unprotected homes and decaying infrastructure, and a land that itself, in many places, had been shorn of its natural defenses.

* * *

“When you have a century of billions of dollars and resources leaving, very little of it staying to create the infrastructure necessary for people to live lives, and it’s neglected as long as it has been,” said Wes Addington, a lawyer in nearby Whitesburg, whose law office is now a flooded wreck, “when that’s combined with a really insane flood, it’s a catastrophe.”

Rural bashing in the context of the Eastern Kentucky floods

Courtney Lucas published this essay in the Washington Post a few days ago, the third day of the record-breaking floods that have hit the area.  It's become typical--liberals telling folks living in conservative states and conservative regions that they're getting what they asked for when they suffer from natural disasters.  Why?  Because they elect conservative politicians.  Here's an excerpt from Lucas's column:  

The disaster here in eastern Kentucky was like nothing I’d ever seen before — but some of the online response to it was depressingly familiar. “These people got what they voted for,” said one post. “Elect a turtle, learn to swim,” read another. “Maybe it’s God’s punishment for being a bastion of ignorance and regression.” Or, my personal favorite, “What are those houses doing there along the river in the first place?”

* * *

I support the Black Lives Matter movement, abortion rights, same-sex marriage — all the things good Democrats are supposed to support. I have also always been an Appalachian, a part of my identity that I cherish. I was born and raised in Pikeville, as were my parents, my grandparents and many generations before them.

This week, when I saw two very different stories about the flooding unfold on social media, I wondered if I was an “us” or a “them,” if I should stand with my party or my people. Democrats often justifiably accuse Republicans of choosing party over people. You don’t have to look hard for examples — in mid-July, it was Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania voting against federal protections for same-sex marriage and then three days later attending his son’s same-sex wedding.

Democrats tend to view themselves as being above such behavior. But what I saw on social media suggests that more than a few can’t put people before party even when lives are in danger.

* * *

The flood waters didn’t check voter registration before taking cars, homes and lives. Yard signs proclaiming “In this house we believe …” were not going to make the water change course and spare the homes of Democrats. But even if this were possible, even if the only people affected by the floods were those who voted for McConnell and Trump, even if the only homes destroyed belonged to gun-toting, Capitol-insurrection-attending, bigoted, worst-of-the-worst Republicans, they are still human beings, and no one deserves the devastation that I’ve seen. No one.

If the choice is between party or people, I’ll choose to stand by my people every time. 

We also saw this phenomenon out of Montana in June, when the area around Yellowstone National Park flooded and social media was alive with people saying Montanans deserved it because they'd elected Gianforte their governor. Never mind the folks who didn't support him. Or even those who did. Didn't they deserve government assistance. The first time I saw it commented on by a big-name writer was this piece by Margaret Renkl, who writes for the New York Times from Nashville.

I'm currently writing a law review article about this phenomenon--and how counterproductive it is. Stay tuned for more--and keep an eye out for this in the media you consume. Maybe you'll even get motivated to push back against the rural bashing.

Other news coverage of the devastating floods in Eastern Kentucky--the poor part of the state, the Appalachian part of the state, is here, here, and here.

National coverage of dramatic flooding in Montana focuses on Yellowstone NP; residents are an afterthought

I first became aware of the flooding in Montana thanks to this journalist out of Red Lodge, Montana yesterday morning.  Here's what came across my Twitter feed.  It shows Rock Creek flooding. 

I'm a Montana-phile, having vacationed in the state several times and having written about its delivery of health and human services here.  So I started following the flood news on Twitter, and I soon saw it was impacting areas south and west of Red Lodge, in Livingston, Paradise Valley, and Gardiner, at the northern entrance to Yellowstone National park.  In particular, the Yellowstone River, of which Rock Creek is a a tributary, was experiencing a flood of historic proportions.  

I watched the three national newspapers I subscribe to for a dispatch about the flooding, and they finally started coming late yesterday (maybe 4 pm Pacific time), but the focus of all of them was on Yellowstone National Park, with barely a mention of the impacted communities where people live and work.  

Fishing shop, Livingston, Montana
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt, August 2017

Here's the New York Times story, headlined, "Entrances to Yellowstone Park Are Closed After Heavy Rain and Floods,  which finally gets around to the towns of Gardiner and Livingstone, Montana, north of the national park, at the end of the story.  Here are the fourth and fifth paragraphs from the end of that story:  

The unruly weather system has caused flooding that has spilled into the southwestern reaches of Montana, affecting residents in Park County, along the edge of the park.

Patients and staff at a hospital in Livingston, Mont., were evacuated on Monday as a precaution amid surging floodwaters, and emergency cases were diverted, the facility said. Residents in some parts of the county, including Livingston, were evacuated from homes, the authorities said.

Yellowstone River in Gardiner, Montana
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

Here's the Washington Post story, "Yellowstone shuts down after record rainfall ravages roads."   It includes these two paragraphs about the region outside the national park: 

Gardiner School
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

The rainfall has affected residents in the region, such as the isolated community of Gardiner. Sholly [Superintendent of Yellowstone NP] said the park is working with state and county officials to support residents.

“We’ve got so many Montana communities right now that are being flooded and without electricity and our heart goes out to them,” said Katrina Wiese, president and CEO of Destination Yellowstone.

Gardiner Community Center
August 2017
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

Here's the Los Angeles Times story, which is headlined, "Yellowstone Park assesses damage after floods ‘never seen in our lifetimes.’"  The story is actually reported by the Associated Press out of Helena, and it gets to life and the consequences of the flood outside the national park in the second paragraph:  

Gardiner, Montana
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

While numerous homes and other structures were destroyed, there were no immediate reports of injuries. Yellowstone officials said they were assessing damage from the storms, which washed away bridges, caused mudslides and left small cities isolated, forcing evacuations by boat and helicopter.

It’s unclear how many visitors are stranded or have been forced to leave the park, or how many people who live outside the park have been rescued and evacuated.

Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a mudslide, washed-out bridges and roads undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers.

Train station Livingston, Montana
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

The flooding cut off road access to Gardiner, Mont., a town of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside Yellowstone’s busy North Entrance. Cooke City was also isolated by floodwaters, and evacuations were issued for residents in Livingston.

With my son at the Dreamcatcher TiPi Lodge, north of Gardiner
across Highway 89 from the Yellowstone River
August 2017

The neglect of folks in these gateway communities reminds me of this.  

Postscript:  NPR's coverage this afternoon also closed with the disaster's impact on the Yellowstone gateway communities of Gardiner and, farther north, Livingston: 

Grocery Store in Gardiner, Montana
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017

Rebecca Demery and her husband own Gardiner's only grocery store which has been largely cleared out. Delivery trucks should be able to get back into town today but access to Gardiner will generally be limited for a long time. Coming out of the pandemic, businesses in gateway towns had been hoping for a big summer.

"I think at this point we're just trying to take it hour by hour," Rebecca said, "because there's nothing really that any of us can do to change it. But it's going to be a very different year than expected I think." 

Irrigation along the Yellowstone River, north of Gardiner
(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2017 

About 50 miles downstream, in Livingston, Mont. the 25-bed hospital was evacuated Monday night and its main campus remains closed Tuesday afternoon. Residents near the Yellowstone River were issued mandatory evacuation orders, while shelters opened in the nearby town of Bozeman. The orders were lifted Tuesday morning.

About a hundred miles to the east, the small town of Red Lodge has seen substantial flooding and evacuations, Yellowstone Public Radio reports.  

The Yellowstone Public Radio report in that link leads with the impact on Red Lodge and Livingston, turning only near the end of the story to Yellowstone National Park.  

Powerful story on attachment to place in the context of the New Mexico fires

NPR reported this morning from near Las Vegas, New Mexico, population 13,000, where wildfires have been raging for weeks.  The piece featured a lovely focus on attachment to place, something one rarely sees acknowledged in the media.  Here's the excerpt, with Trujillo quotes from "the town's mayor, Louie Trujillo, describing the view from his window at city hall."  Those conducting the interview are Leila Fadel and A Martinez:  

Some families have started to evacuate their homes. Trujillo says others who live on the surrounding ranches and in canyons have lost everything.

FADEL: Crews don't have an exact tally yet of how many homes have burned. Since winds kicked up on Monday, the fire has been burning too hot and too intensely for anyone to check.

TRUJILLO: There are cattle ranches. They are just little ranch houses, old-style homes, mostly adobe, some stick-built, and of course, some mobile homes in that area.

MARTINEZ: Losing these properties is uniquely heartbreaking, he says. Some have been in the same family for generations.

TRUJILLO: It's a loss of culture. It's a loss of querencia, if you know that word in Spanish.

MARTINEZ: Yeah, there's no direct translation in English. Trujillo says querencia means a feeling people have for the land.

TRUJILLO: To us, it's really more of a spiritual belonging to the land. And it's not just a house that you buy and move on to another one and so forth. So when there's lineage and there's generations that have owned that property, so it means a lot more to people here in northern New Mexico.

FADEL: He says it's a common sentiment in this corner of New Mexico, where longtime families like his trace their ancestry back centuries.

TRUJILLO: The current proprietors of these properties were given to them by their grandpa and their tios and their tias and their, you know, bisabuelos. And their great-grandfather had this house, and now it's mine. And so you can see that it's not just a house; it means so much more.

Post script:  The New York Times published this story, with similar themes, on the afternoon of May 5.  It's "Burning Down a Way of Life," by Simon Romero. 

Further postscript from May 8, 2022, in the Washington Post: "Winds fuel New Mexico wildfire, complicating containment efforts"

LA Times story explains why FEMA denies assistance to California wildfire victims

Alex Wigglesworth reported yesterday for the Los Angeles Times under the headline, "These wildfire survivors say FEMA did little to help those who lost homes."  An excerpt, about denials of assistance to victims of the Caldor Fire, primarily in El Dorado County, follows:  

FEMA said it considered multiple factors before denying aid, including the destruction of homes and infrastructure, residents’ insurance coverage and income levels and the fiscal resources of the state. It determined the Caldor fire “was not of such severity and magnitude to warrant the designation of the Individual Assistance program,” spokesman Victor Inge wrote in an email.

But residents of Grizzly Flats, a rural community in the western Sierra Nevada where the fire destroyed an estimated two-thirds of the housing stock, along with the town’s water system, say that makes no sense. They fear the government’s calculations were skewed by wealthy neighboring areas such as El Dorado Hills and Lake Tahoe, obscuring the true reality of the fire’s impact.

“Just because we reside within the borders of El Dorado County doesn’t mean we are rich,” Tyler said.

The California Office of Emergency Services agreed in a letter appealing the denial, pointing out that predisaster unemployment in Grizzly Flats was more than four times the national rate.

* * * 

FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program provides for grants totaling up to $75,800 to assist uninsured or underinsured disaster survivors with things such as home and vehicle repairs and replacement, medical expenses and the replacement of personal property. The agency also offers rental assistance on which there is no cap.

In order for residents to be eligible, the governor must request the assistance and the president must approve it. The White House bases its decision on a recommendation from FEMA, representatives said.

FEMA, in turn, forms its recommendation based on the Stafford Act of 1988, which dictates how the U.S. government responds to disasters, and the Code of Federal Regulations, which spells out the criteria for evaluating a governor’s request for a major disaster declaration.

The principal factors are the amount of uninsured home and personal property losses and the fiscal capacity of the state in which the disaster took place, which are calculated as a ratio. The higher the estimated cost of providing assistance and the lower a state’s total taxable receipts, the more likely a state is to be approved for assistance.

That puts California at a relative disadvantage from the start, as its economy is larger than any other U.S. state and most countries.

Other posts about the Caldor Fire, which raged for more than a month starting about an hour east of where I live in Sacramento and burning another hour's drive to the South Lake Tahoe basin, are here and here.  Other stories about California's wildfires are here.  A policy brief about legal issues facing California disaster survivors, with a focus on rural folks as wildfire victims and their FEMA claims, is here.  

In other California wildfire news, judge puts kabash on luxury mixed-use development in rural Lake County

Screenshot from proposed Guenoc Valley development
website mentions "managed rural landscape" 

Judge J. David Markham of the Superior Court in nonmetro Lake County, California, ruled earlier this week that the proposed Guenoc Valley mixed-use development must halt pending development of a better wildfire plan.  

Dale Kasler and Ryan Sabalow report today for the Sacramento Bee.  The judge held that the county planners who signed off on the development's environmental documents didn't "account for what would happen when a fast-moving fire erupts and the resort's workers and guests all try to leave the area at the same time."  

“A significant number of wildfire related deaths in California occur during attempts to evacuate,” the judge wrote. Markham said developers had done a good job of attempting to reduce fire risks. That said, they hadn’t fully accounted for serious problems that could arise if a wildfire broke out. A portion of the project’s 16,000 acres burned in 2020, the worst wildfire season in modern California history. Markham wrote that the resort could bring up to 4,070 new people to the sparsely populated area of Lake County, where the roads could be overwhelmed during a wildfire.

The judge's decision continues:   

These people will likely compete with residents in the surrounding area for safe evacuation routes.  The additional people competing for the same limited routes can cause congestion and delay in evacuation, resulting in increased wildfire related deaths. This is undoubtedly a situation where the Project, by bringing a significant number of people into the area, may significantly exacerbate existing environmental hazards; specifically, wildfires and their associated risks.

The Lake County supervisor, Moke Simon, whose district includes Guenoc Valley expressed disappointment in the ruling.  This is from Simon's statement, released by the county:  

The investments proposed, including adding housing supply and even a fire station and helipad, offered the potential for lasting regional economic benefits. If the ultimate result of this decision is the project not moving forward, that will be a tremendous loss.  

Like Simon, the developers point to the need for housing, and Sabalow and Kasler provide this additional context about the competing concerns of housing and wildfire management in the context of places prone to wildfires:   

In 2020, as some of the worst fires of the season were still burning, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 182, a bill that would have required communities approving new developments in wildfire zones to build evacuation routes and raise fees to clear flammable vegetation. 

In his veto message, Newsom said the bill would conflict with the state’s goals of easing its crippling housing shortage. California has been building 100,000 to 120,000 homes a year since 2015, well short of the annual goal of 180,000 set by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

Yes, Lake County--like all of California, even the rural bits--is facing a housing shortage.  Indeed, Lake County has one of the greatest shortages of habitable housing in all of California, and a high eviction rate, too.  But the housing that would be built in the Guenoc Valley won't serve the impoverished folks in Lake County--those bearing the brunt of the county's housing shortage--because they won't be able to afford to live in the posh new community.  Here's how the Bee article describes the planned housing stock, also noting the resort's proximity near upmarket Napa Valley:

Located just over the line from Napa County, Guenoc Valley would bring luxury resort villas and upscale housing, along with a polo field designed by an internationally known polo star who counts Prince Harry as one of his friends.

I can see how the resort would bring jobs to Lake County, of course, but not how the new construction will alleviate the housing problem.  Indeed, based on the apparent physical geography of the Guenoc Valley (based on photos I'm seeing online), it seems workers will have to commute in on two-lane roads, like for example service workers commute into Telluride, Colorado, situated in a box canyon, or even how workers must commute into the Tahoe basin because they can't afford to live there.  Ultimately, then, this development seems to be an example of rich urbanites consuming rurality.  

The documents filed with the county regarding the project, two miles from Middletown, are here. 

Looking forward to seeing next steps with this litigation.  Meanwhile, it's interesting to see a lowly trial court judge in impoverished Lake County exert power over ultra-wealthy developers.  

Postscript:  Los Angeles Times reporting on this matter is here.  

Legal consequences of state investigators' finding that PG&E equipment involved in start of Dixie Fire

The Los Angeles Times is just one of many outlets reporting Tuesday on PG&E's role in the ignition of the Dixie Fire in July, 2021, one of the largest in California history.  Here's an excerpt from Gregory Yee's story:

State investigators have determined that a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power line was responsible for sparking last year’s massive Dixie fire, which torched more than 960,000 acres in five Northern California counties as it burned clear across the Sierra Nevada.

According to a statement by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, investigators found that the fire “was caused by a tree contacting electrical distribution lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric located west of Cresta Dam.”

The department’s investigative report was forwarded to the Butte County district attorney’s office, according to Tuesday’s statement.

Cal Fire officials referred all questions regarding the report to prosecutors. The district attorney’s office could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

This, from Scott Rodd of Capital Public Radio, provides further context on the utility's fire-related legal woes:

The utility giant said in a statement that it “will continue to be tenacious in our efforts to stop fire ignitions from our equipment and to ensure that everyone and everything is always safe.” Those efforts include a multi-billion dollar undertaking to bury 10,000 miles of powerlines and to keep cutting off power in areas where there’s high wind.

The announcement is not a total surprise. In July, PG&E reported to the California Public Utilities Commission that its equipment may have caused the Dixie Fire. One of the utility’s employees responded to a power outage reported at Cresta Dam and found blown fuses and a tree leaning into PG&E equipment, with fire burning at the tree’s base.

At the time, Cal Fire investigators took several pieces of PG&E equipment.

Last year, Cal Fire investigators concluded the utility started the Zogg Fire, which burned 56,000 acres and killed four people. The Shasta County District Attorney’s Office charged the utility with manslaughter and other crimes in September.

In 2018, PG&E’s equipment started the deadly Camp Fire in Butte County. The fire leveled the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. PG&E later pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter. In the following months, the company sought bankruptcy protection as it faced tens of billions of dollars in potential liability for wildfires it caused.

Here's a follow up from Rodd today focusing on a newish wildfire liability fund:  

Pacific Gas & Electric could be the first company to access a wildfire liability fund established by the state over two years ago, intended to keep utilities solvent after causing major wildfires.

* * *

Gov. Gavin Newsom established the liability fund by signing AB 1054 in the summer of 2019, as PG&E faced tens of billions of dollars in potential liability for wildfires it caused. The bill established a $21 billion liability fund to help utilities cover the cost of major wildfires started by their equipment.

At the time, PG&E — the state’s largest utility — had already filed for bankruptcy protection and faced uncertainty about its future.

The state’s three largest utilities — PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — will pay for half of the $21 billion fund, and their customers will cover the other half through rate increases. Currently, the fund has about $11 billion, according to a report released last week by the California Catastrophe Response Council, which oversees the fund.

Utilities must pay $1 billion in claims before being able to access the fund. PG&E’s liability for the Dixie Fire is expected to surpass that threshold.

Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, is on the council. He said claims tied to the Dixie Fire could be a useful test of the fund’s responsiveness, and see where there’s room for improvement.

Also today, The Guardian has published a feature on Greenville, the Plumas County town destroyed by the Dixie Fire.  The photos by Rachel Bujalski are powerful, as are the stories collected by journalist Dani Anguiano.  

Prior posts about the destruction of Greenville are here and here.  

Rural community vignettes from the Montana Amtrak crash

It's been interesting to see how journalists --especially national journalists--have described what happened yesterday with the Amtrak derailment in Joplin, Montana (population just a couple hundred folks) in Liberty County, population 2,339.  The New York Times story today includes some interesting comments from a man who was on the Empire Builder when it derailed, Steve Glaser, 66, along with officials and residents of this remote corner of Montana.    

After the crash, Mr. Glaser said “the community took over.”

Sarah Robbin, the disaster emergency services coordinator for Liberty County, Mont., one of the most rural counties in the state, had spent much of her time over the past few years playing out a scenario like this in her head and planning how best to respond.

In each of the small towns that dot Route 2, which cuts through northern Montana along the railroad tracks, there are just a few hundred to a few thousand residents. The nearest major hospital is hours away by car. Emergency services are sparse.

“We are a small county,” she said, adding that anything like Saturday’s crash “would immediately overwhelm us. Being small and rural, relying on your neighbors is extremely important.”

In the town of Chester, about 7 to 8 miles west of the derailment, a siren system alerts the 1,000 or so residents to any important news. One ring signals a city meeting. Two, an ambulance. Three, a fire call. And four, “some terrible disaster,” said Jesse Anderson, who owns the MX Motel, a 20-room stopover that typically caters to anglers, construction workers and hunters.

When Mr. Anderson heard four sirens yesterday, he assumed it was a mistake. But then he saw fire trucks speeding through the 25 miles-per-hour main street.

“We had no idea it was going to be something of this scale,” he said.

Emergency responders from across at least seven counties rushed in to help. As the only motel for 50 miles, east or west, Mr. Anderson was called on to house some of the passengers. He offered his available rooms free of charge.

Families from a nearby Hutterite colony brought food for passengers while they waited for rides and lodging in the school gym. 

Here's a post from July about the strain on rural ambulance service in places like Montana and Wyoming, where fewer people are stepping up to do the work.