Governor Newsom has proclaimed a State of Emergency to expedite implementation of fire fuel treatment projects. The Governor took similar action in 2019 to suspend CEQA for 35 priority projects, which also required implementation of best management practices to minimize environmental impacts. This Emergency Proclamation, which was released on March 1, 2025, expands the suspension to “State statutes, rules, regulations, and requirements that fall within the jurisdiction of boards, departments, and offices within the California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Natural Resources Agency,” including but not limited to the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act.
Projects eligible for suspension of statutes, rules, regulations, and requirements must include as a primary objective at least one of the following activities:
- Removal of hazardous, dead, and/or dying trees
- Removal of vegetation for the creation of strategic fuel breaks as identified by approved fire prevention plans, including without limitation CAL FIRE Unit Fire Plans or Community Wildfire Preparedness Plans
- Removal of vegetation for community defensible space
- Removal of vegetation along roadways, highways, and freeways for the creation of safer ingress and egress routes for the public and responders and to reduce roadside ignitions
- Removal of vegetation using cultural traditional ecological knowledge for cultural burning and/or prescribed fire treatments for fuels reduction
- Maintenance of previously established fuel breaks or fuels modification projects
The proclamation emphasizes that any activities performed under the suspension of statutes, rules, regulations, and requirements must “balance expeditious fuels reduction and environmental protection.” This may be accomplished by adhering to the “State Environmental Protection Plan, or a comparable plan.”
At its Regional Meeting in Marin County on March 27, 2025, the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force released more information explaining how the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Environmental Protection Agency will execute this directive.
A webinar will be held on April 11, 2025, where Secretaries Wade Crowfoot and Yana Garcia will:
- discuss how to request suspension of regulatory compliance and permitting requirements for priority wildfire safety projects;
- provide input on actions that state agencies should take to expedite and expand prescribed and cultural fire projects; and
- share plans to update, expand, and make more efficient the CalVTP Program EIR—a key CEQA compliance efficiency tool that has expedited over 500,000 acres of wildfire resilience projects.
Secretary Crowfoot noted that the State Environmental Protection Plan for vegetation treatment is in preparation. He also provided the following additional information ahead of the webinar on projects that will be eligible for regulatory suspension:
- Project suspension approvals by the Secretary(ies) must occur in 2025. This information clarifies the definition of “initiate this calendar year”.
- Treatment projects must be completed within 2 years and be less than 3,000 acres in size. These criteria explain project eligibility for the regulatory suspension.
- The CalVTP Program EIR can be used as the CEQA efficiency tool for projects encompassing treatment of more acres or completion over a longer time period. Recent trends in the use of CalVTP have been toward large projects, regularly over 10,000 acres.. The update of the Program EIR will help CalVTP continue to promote larger, landscape-scale vegetation treatment projects, as directed in the proclamation.
