
Having Discounted Wildfire Threat, Why is AG Suing?
If someone got a map of California and overlaid the state’s high-risk wildfire severity zones one would have an outline of all developable land in California. In other words, the state’s entire inventory of developable land is one big high-risk wildfire severity zone.
Let’s face it, most of California is a desert. Excluding the areas in and around the heavily wooded forests of the northern state, Californians dwell in either farm land or are urban dwellers – and mostly the latter. Indeed, less than six percent of the land area is populated by humans.
So, lawsuits against two developments in wildfire zones in San Diego County (“the County”) are, taken together, litigation against all development across California and are profoundly anti-growth.
This fact didn’t stop state Attorney General Xavier Bercerra. Earlier this month – as one of his last official acts as AG (last week Bercerra was confirmed by the Senate as President Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services) – he joined in the lawsuits, siding with the plaintiffs, on behalf of California.
While we Californians are primarily city folk, we have over the last 150… Read More