On a chilly summer morning, a group of special district professionals and two candidates for state senate gathered at the Tahoe City Public Utility District to attend a tour organized by California Special District Association's Sierra Network Public Affairs Field Coordinator and the Gold Country CSDA Chapter. The California Special Districts Association (CSDA) created the Legislative Tours program to bring legislators into the field to experience the uniqueness of their districts in an effort for inclusion in the legislative process.
“It is important for legislators to hear directly from special districts in areas with specific challenges affected by legislation,” said CSDA Advocacy and Public Affairs Director Kyle Packham. “Understanding the unique aspects of an area, and the funding limitations special districts face, is important for legislators as they propose broad legislative solutions to California’s challenges.”
The tour began with a presentation at the Tahoe City Public Utility District (TCPUD), an independent special district formed in 1938 when small neighborhood development was occurring around the Lake Tahoe Basins. The Tahoe City community created the TCPUD to provide public water service and expanded its charter in 1947 to include parks and recreation to maintain the public beaches at the pristine alpine lake. In 1952, the TCPUD built the Tahoe City sewer system and began operating it. The TCPUD is funded by an allocation of water and sewer rates, property taxes, user fees and grants.
Presentations from TCPUD General Manager Sean Barclay, and North Tahoe Fire Protection District (NTFPD) Fire Chief Steve Leighton focused on the unique wildland urban interface (WUI) aspects of fire risk and the inherent need for access to water to protect the towns surrounding Lake Tahoe in the event of wildfire.
The Tahoe basin special districts have been on the leading edge of WUI wildfire strategy, having learned an important lesson about the vulnerabilities of the Lake Tahoe Basin’s towns, surrounded by peaks of wild forest in a high altitude, drought prone environment during the 2007 Angora Fire. At that time, the Tahoe Basin’s firefighting districts were spread along the 72 miles of shoreline, operating independently from each other. The Angora Fire, which burned 3,100 acres and saw a loss of 280 structures, was a wake-up call to the need for collaboration among the fire districts surrounding the lake. With hard lessons learned, the separate districts worked to consolidate their communications systems to better coordinate response to rescue and fire calls around the busy lake.
When the Caldor Fire ravaged the area in 2021, blowing in from its origins southwest of Lake Tahoe and threatening to invade the basin, the groundwork for beating back the wildfire had been laid. As the wildfire threatened the community of Christmas Valley at the southern end of the Tahoe Basin, the fire crews were able to save the hundreds of structures in the path of the inferno because of the years of coordinated effort to reduce forest vegetation and upgrade the water infrastructure to modern firefighting standards for hydrants, storage, and capacity. Despite the 221,835 acres of devastation wrought by Caldor, not a single home was lost in Christmas Valley.
The tour of the Tahoe City area emphasized the success of the Caldor’s firefighting effort to stress the urgent need to upgrade the water infrastructure around Lake Tahoe. Along the north shore of Lake Tahoe, the infrastructure was put in place long ago over many years of developing communities without advanced planning for tourism and second-home owners who would be drawn to the area. As a result, the water infrastructure is split between public agencies such as the TCPUD and NTPUD and private water systems with legacy ownership. Many developed areas still rely on aged water systems designed for domestic water use without regard for firefighting needs.
“NTPUD has three water systems that are bifurcated by two private water providers. The separate systems limit our ability to effectively move water along the north shore,” stated NTPUD General Manager Brad Johnson. “Should we need to move water from system to system for firefighting, the hydraulic limitations of these separate systems act as barriers.”
During the Caldor Fire, the water and fire districts coordinated efforts to monitor water pressure, identify locations where homeowners had evacuated but left their sprinkler systems running, or even placed sprinklers on roofs in a desperate attempt to save their homes. The reduction in water pressure caused by wide open spigots on aging infrastructure threatened firefighting efforts.
Back in Tahoe City, the tour included stops in old wildfire burn scars to highlight the proximity to homes, plus views of several segments of neighborhoods to underscore the difference between areas with vegetation management and those that were clogged with trees and undergrowth, the sparseness of inadequately spaced fire hydrants and the narrow neighborhood streets with single entry and exit points that clog traffic during evacuations.
The NTPUD, TCPUD, and NTFPD are synchronizing their effort and their communications to emphasize the importance of water infrastructure in firefighting. While the importance of water to fight fire may seem obvious, there is a gap in state and federal funding opportunities to meet the need. When Barclay approaches agencies for water infrastructure funding, he is told the existing policies do not include water for firefighting. When he approaches agencies who grant funding for firefighting, he is told their funding allocations do not include money for water infrastructure. And when he approaches agencies focused on disaster funds, he is told their water infrastructure programs are for disaster relief and not mitigation.
“We are the hole in the donut,” said Barclay. However, the recently proposed Climate Resiliency Bond Vehicle (AB 2387) could solve the problem with just these 23 words - “water delivery system improvements for fire suppression purposes for communities in high fire hazard severity zones or very high fire hazard severity zones,” the inclusion of this language creates an opportunity for these types of projects to be eligible for funding and would make the difference in the water-for-wildfire effort.
The National Special Districts Association, of which CSDA is a founding member, recently released a report on this issue, which can be found here.
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