Fire Safety Changes Would Hold Tree Owners Hostage
Under the hope-inspiring concept of “streamlining,” the Fire and Community Development Departments have come up with a proposal to “streamline” the city’s stand-alone fuel modification projects by exempting them from Design Review. But projects on private property would continue to be subject to the severe tree and vegetation removal requirements that the Fire Department has been imposing without adopted authorization for years.
Here’s the scenario. A property owner submits plans at city hall for a new house or for a major remodel, including the required landscape plan. The plans must pass zoning plan check and be approved by the Fire Department before being scheduled for a Design Review hearing. Not streamlined—a couple rounds of 30-day reviews and then 30-day rechecks is common.
Is there existing vegetation on the property? Usually it is documented on the landscape plan.
The fire department consults its list of “target species.” The “Targets” are plants the department has deemed as “undesirable” and said to be more prone to fire than other plants. Is there a pine, palm, Brazilian or California pepper, Melaleuca, Eucalyptus or the native lemonade berry or toyon, or one of the many others on the list? That’s not all, will the canopy of a proposed or existing tree extend to within 10 feet of the structure or over the property line? If yes, the plans are sent back for revision. Those “targets” must be shown on the landscape plan to be removed and the too-close plants either removed or pruned before the plans can progress to a Design Review hearing.
Thus the owners are held hostage—either show the offending plants to be removed, or protest their removal by hiring a fire engineering firm to justify why the trees are still OK to remain—and delay their hearing at Design Review. This several thousand-dollar consultation takes another increment of time before the report is created and then it still has to be approved by the fire department.
What often happens is that the owners acquiesce and agree to the removals before the Design Review Board even sees the plans. The Board and the public are told that the trees and other plants are required to be removed by the Fire Fepartment and there’s nothing to be done about it.
Often the fire engineering consultant does find justification for preserving the trees and suggests mitigations for fire safety. For example, pruning in accordance with recommended diagrams, removing low branches, and adding irrigation, even installing sprinklers within the fronds of palm trees.
One property owner wanted to plant two olive trees in his front yard but because of the Fire Department spacing limitations there was no place to plant the trees. He also hired a fire engineering consultant who did calculations to demonstrate that the olives could be planted where he wanted.
One would think that these justifications developed by the consultants could be precedent-setting—that the fire department could apply the recommended mitigations to their future reviews, help owners through the process more quickly and save trees and vegetation in the process. But no, a consultant has to be hired individually every time according to the department.
This situation is untenable—onerous for property owners and damaging to the community landscape. We are losing our urban forest, exacerbating climate change and preventing buffering between properties and shielding of views of tall facades.
When Greg Vail, Bob Borthwick and I wrote the Landscape and Scenic Highways Element for Laguna Beach we proposed changes in Fire Department policies to address the issues of target species, spacing requirements and precedent-setting reports. The Department agreed and the Element was adopted in November 2018. The Department has changed its mind and at the Planning Commission on Jan. 20 and Council on Feb. 23 is asking to amend the plan to:
- Apply the stricter fuel modification requirements (including “target species” to the whole “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone” (87% of the city).
- No flexibility in spacing requirements unless the applicant hires a consultant.
- Delete the provision for applying previously approved mitigations to help save trees and vegetation—this means continued delays and expenses for applicants.
Since the present version of the Fire Department guidelines is not approved and goes much beyond the approved Local Coastal Plan document from 1989, now is the time reject this proposal and to set up a public process to review all its components with the recommendations of General Plan Elements in mind. This is how true “streamlining” can be achieved.
Ann is a landscape architect and former Laguna Beach mayor.
