A new Hazardous Vegetation Abatement ordinance has been approved by the County Board of Supervisors. It is due for review in November of 2019. Please post comments, questions and concerns below, and we will try to bring them to the attention of the Supervisors.
Lake County Weed Abatement Ordinance
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Did i miss where the fire dept endorsed burning ? I no longer burn because the SLF board president says there fire dept wants nothing to do with helping the community burn the debris!
I say 4.4 will apply to everyone because , extended burn days are very hard to work in to clear lots , not legal and chipping is aprox 30x more expensive than burning . The last two yrs i cleared aprox 100 acres burning . With the SLF board not endorcing burning , i no longer burn . Air quality Doug Gearheart says he would like to work with our community burning if our fire dept would get involved .
The state burns all along our homes for fire prevention .
The County burns in a designated burn area because chipping or dump runs are too expensive .
An improvement over past drafts, but still with inherent problems – discrimination against unimproved parcel owners and owners of improved parcels under five acres with no obligations laid upon owners of improved parcels greater than 5 acres – excessive fines – poor notification
From Definitions –
*Combustible material definition does not exclude wood stack for fireplace – wood stacks would be required to be removed
*Continue with ambiguity as to what obligation a parcel of land over 5 acres with structures has – does not fall under obligations for improved OR unimproved parcels
Sec 60.3.1 – incompatible descriptions of combustible material removal – 10 feet from roadways, 30 feet from neighboring structures, then (sub-section e) from all of the property
Sec 63.1 – insufficient time for out of state or out of country owners to respond
Sec 64.1 – requires fines and fees at any time of year even though abatement can not be accomplished during “fire season”. Fines will accrue for several months (into hundreds of thousands of dollars) while abatement not allowed by fire department
Fines are still excessive at $181,000 per year when fines for defense of structures in SRC are $100 the first year. Expect Eighth Amendment challenge.
We are in Sonora, Mexico for the winter. We can not open any website run by the County of Lake, any County Departmental web site, Sheriff’s web site, etc to even read Board of Supervisor’s Meeting agenda and actions. All non-governmental websites in Lake County accessible to us – including CAC. We assume others out of country would have the same difficulty with web access and would be uninformed as to the discussion, passage, and/or enforcement of this ordinance and would not expect communications from the County other than property tax bill. We have recommended before and recommend again that a notice of at least the possibility of fees and fines be included in the property tax notice.
[Section Three – some irony in the statement that this ordinance will not have a significant environmental effect…Ah, what was the purpose of this ordinance?]
We will all be governed by the wording of this ordinance in the future without the guidance of the “intentions” of its creators
This type of ordinance would be useful for minimization of the radiance effect of wildfire – fires on calm days. The other necessary action as pointed out by the US Forest Service is to harden structures against wind-blown embers such as we do get in California, and/or restrictions on construction in wildfire-prone areas. I.e., there is (or should be) more legislation to come…
Last note – we wish Lake County would wait until other counties have passed similar ordinances so that we may benefit from the approaches and difficulties (law suits) that they experience. Lake County cannot really afford to be the “trail blazer” when it comes to new types of law.
The last sentence of section 13-60.1, Duty to Abate should be re-written to change the word “property” to “structures”. Otherwise it could be a tremendous burden to clear and abate vegetation solely because it is adjoining another persons land.
Got the latest version of the ordinance forwarded to us – looks better, but…
There still remains the curious distinction in obligations between improved and unimproved property – improved parcels are only affected when in an area primarily intended for residential use, and unimproved properties are affected everywhere. Large improved properties that are not maintained (or even inhabited) may have just as much effect on public safety with respect to roadways and may have as much combustible material needing removal as do the unimproved properties. The cynic in us is beginning to believe the distinction is intentional.
Fines are still assessed in the fire season, even though owners would not be allowed to work on their properties. That would raise a great deal of revenue for the county but seems inherently unfair.
We no longer “have a dog in this fight” as we sold our unimproved acreage, but we would still like to see equitable laws.