Title
Chief Administrative Office recommending the Board consider the following regarding Biomass activities:
1) Approve and authorize the Chair to sign the non-financial Tri-County Memorandum of Association comprised of El Dorado, Nevada, and Placer counties; and
2) Approve and authorize the Chief Administrative Officer, or Assistant Chief Administrative Officer, to execute any required documents or amendments related to the non-financial Tri-County Memorandum of Association, subject to County Counsel and Risk Management concurrence.
FUNDING: N/A
Body
DISCUSSION / BACKGROUND
The County of El Dorado’s commitment to forest health, wildfire risk reduction, and biomass utilization began in 2021 with the establishment of the Vegetation Management and Resiliency Working Group and continued with the establishment of the Office of Wildfire Preparedness and Resilience (OWPR) in 2022. This commitment has been reinforced by the Board of Supervisors’ designation of forest health and wildfire management as a top priority in recent years.
At the state level, the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI), formerly the Office of Planning and Research (OPR), launched five pilot partnership projects under the California Forest Residual Aggregation Market Enhancement (Cal FRAME) initiative to address barriers to removing biomass, which is necessary to increase wildfire resilience across the state. One of those five, the Tahoe Central Sierra partnership, includes El Dorado, Nevada, and Placer counties. These three partner counties have engaged with water agencies, cities, fire-safe councils, tribes, utilities, nonprofit organizations, and others to research and develop coordinated solutions to biomass-removal challenges in the Tahoe Central Sierra region.
Over the past seven months, staff from the partner counties worked with a consulting team to develop the attached draft Memorandum of Association (MOA) as part of a collective response. The MOA provides a...
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