In 2018 the California legislature adopted Senate Bill 901. Under SB 901, California has taken a comprehensive approach to mitigating and creating greater resilience against wildfire risks. A key element of SB 901 is in the new provisions of the California Public Utilities Code (PUC) Section 8386 which require electric utilities to develop annual wildfire mitigation plans (WMPs) to prevent, combat, and respond to wildfires within their service territories. Under PUC 8386(c), utilities must include in their WMPs statutorily prescribed content addressing a list of specific issues.
In order to implement this requirement of SB 901, the CPUC initiated a new rulemaking proceeding in October 2018, referred to as Rulemaking (R.) 18-10-007. In R. 18-10-007, the CPUC adopted a deadline of February 6, 2019, for utilities to file their initial WMPs and ordered utilities to use a uniform WMP template. Initial WMPs will be subject to both formal comment and interactive discussion at technical workshops.
For more information on the utility wildfire mitigation plans and the proceeding at the California Public Utilities, please refer to the Commission’s website: http://cpuc.ca.gov/SB901/