County of Sonoma Agenda Item Summary Report

Transcription

1 County of Sonoma Agenda Item Summary Report Agenda Item Number: 26 (This Section for use by Clerk of the Board Only.) Clerk of the Board 575 Administration Drive Santa Rosa, CA To: Board of Directors, Sonoma County Water Agency, Board of Supervisors, County of Sonoma Board Agenda Date: August 7, 2018 Vote Requirement: Majority Department or Agency Name(s): Sonoma County Water Agency, Sonoma County Fire and Emergency Services, Sonoma County Sheriff s Office, Sonoma County General Services, Sonoma County Information Services Staff Name and Phone Number: Jay Jasperse Lori Wyatt Title: Supervisorial District(s): All Lake Sonoma Watershed Fire Camera Pilot Project Recommended Actions: Concurrent Actions: A) Authorize Sonoma County Water Agency s General Manager to execute an agreement (in a form approved by County Counsel) with The Regents of the University of California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (U.C. San Diego), on behalf of the AlertWildfire consortium of universities, for installation, first year of operation, and administration of the Lake Sonoma Watershed Fire Camera Pilot Project in the amount of $422,037. B) Authorize Sonoma County Water Agency s General Manager, Sonoma County Sheriff, County General Services Director, and Information Service Department Director to execute or amend agreements between agencies, other County Departments, and with property owners as needed for the Project. Executive Summary: The requested actions will authorize the Sonoma County Water Agency s (Water Agency) General Manager to execute an agreement for the installation and operations of the Lake Sonoma Watershed Fire Camera Pilot Project (Project) with the ALERTWildfire consortium of universities, led by U.C. San Diego and including Nevada Seismological Laboratory at University of Nevada Reno, and University of Oregon. The consortium, in partnership with the Water Agency; and with the support of Sonoma County Fire and Emergency Services, Sheriff s Office, County Information Services Department, County General Services Department, Pepperwood Preserve, Fairfield Osborn Preserve, and Sonoma State University; will build and implement a network of eight high-definition fire cameras. This network will: (1) provide early fire detection and situational awareness for the protection of the Lake Sonoma watershed and surrounding areas; (2) provide additional future resiliency capabilities to the Sonoma County Sheriff microwave

2 communications network; and (3) provide a nascent platform to build upon for a regional fire camera system that includes Sonoma, Napa, Marin, Mendocino, and Lake Counties. Discussion: HISTORY OF ITEM/BACKGROUND Sonoma County is prone to recurring, catastrophic wildfires. The fire history includes the recent October 2017 Tubbs, Nuns, and Pocket fires, and the 1964 Hanley fire, which threatened Santa Rosa following a path that was nearly identical to the 2017 Tubbs fire. As noted in the Sonoma County Hazard Mitigation Plan, in a 50-year span from Sonoma County has experienced 18 major wildfires that destroyed nearly 2,286 structures. On October 8, 2017, several fires started in Sonoma and Napa Counties that took over 25 lives, destroyed over 110,000 acres of land and over 7,000 structures. On October 9, 2017, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued an emergency declaration for eight counties, that included Napa and Sonoma counties. The Tubbs fire became the most destructive fire in California history. Lake Sonoma is the primary water supply for more than 600,000 people and businesses in the region and reducing the magnitude of a wildfire in or near the watershed is critical to public safety. The forested hills surrounding Lake Sonoma have experienced more than 10 fires since 1940, and remain vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire as shown in the Water Agency s Local Hazard Mitigation Plan. The catastrophic impacts of October 2017 s fire storm clearly identified the potential benefits of a wildfire early detection system in Sonoma County and the greater north bay. The Lake Sonoma Watershed Fire Camera Pilot Project (Project) will mitigate the potential for fire outbreaks to reach a catastrophic size by providing decision makers with the necessary information to make informed decisions and deploy appropriate resources rapidly to the most critical locations. Following the devastating fires of October 2017, the Sonoma County Water Agency began working with the Sonoma County Department of Fire and Emergency Services, Sonoma County Sheriff s Office, CAL FIRE, Sonoma County Information Systems Department, Sonoma County General Services, Sonoma County Office of Recovery & Resiliency, Pepperwood Preserve, Fairfield Osborn Preserve, and the AlertWildfire university consortium,, to launch a pilot project to install a network of high-definition pantilt-zoom cameras for an early fire detection system for the Lake Sonoma watershed. The system would initially consist of eight cameras focused in the north county. In order to build and operationalize the Project, the Sheriff s Office Telecommunication Bureau will install some of the fire cameras on existing communication towers, General Services will review and amend existing lease agreements if necessary, Fire and Emergency Services will assist with operational coordination, and Information Services Department will install and configure network communication systems as needed. ALERTWildfire System ALERTwildfire is a consortium of three universities The University of Nevada, Reno, University of California San Diego, and the University of Oregon providing access to state-of-the-art, pan-tilt-zoom fire camera and associated tools to help firefighters and first responders: 1) discover/locate/confirm fire

3 ignition; 2) quickly scale fire resources up or down appropriately; 3) monitor fire behavior through containment; 4) during firestorms, help evacuation through enhanced situational awareness, and, 5) ensure contained fires are monitored appropriately through their demise. This Project is an initial fire camera network for Sonoma County that will provide the basis for a proposed county-wide system that would be known as AlertNorthBay, which will be modeled after existing fire camera networks currently operating in the Lake Tahoe region, state of Nevada, and San Diego and Orange Counties. These systems have proven successful, having assisted in more than 350 fires in the past two years and used by fire managers with the US Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, CAL FIRE, and many local fire protection districts. The Project was designed through a complex collaboration amongst County departments, Sonoma County Water Agency, Cal Fire, several universities of California, Oregon, and Nevada, and local non-profit preserves with the goal to provide live-streaming views of the lake s watershed and provide real-time information to firefighting staff and be accessible to the public. It may in the future have the added benefit of providing additional resiliency to the Sonoma County Sheriff microwave communications network. The state-of-the-art system uses near-infrared technology for night vision, and allows fire officials to take control of the fire cameras during wildfire emergencies to monitor fire and weather activity. Each camera site will include a microwave tower that provides sufficient bandwidth to transmit the highdefinition fire camera data. The recently upgraded Sonoma County Sheriff microwave communications network has enough bandwidth to support the Project and will incorporate some of the fire cameras at existing microwave tower sites. Final site selection for the Project s eight camera locations (Attachment A) will be part of the implementation process. Utilizing these pre-existing sites will substantially reduce the cost of implementation. In addition to the Sonoma County Sheriff microwave communications network, the Project includes building and installing an additional fire camera microwave communications network utilizing the Corporation for Education Networks Initiatives in California (CENIC) fiber at Sonoma State University for new communication towers at Pepperwood Preserve and Fairfield Osborn Preserve. This additional microwave communications network will provide additional coverage of the watershed, a redundancy to the County microwave communications network, and future expansion and resiliency. REDCOM and CalFire dispatch centers have agreed to add the fire camera operations to their dispatch center protocols and procedures. County Fire and Emergency Services is providing coordination assistance during the operational plan development. As 911 calls are received from the public reporting smoke and potential fires, the dispatch centers will be able to use the cameras to verify the fire, location and magnitude to determine the size and scale of response to dispatch. With the support of cooperating agencies and County departments, the Water Agency anticipates the Project to be installed and operational by the end of September 2018 to assist the Sonoma County public safety agencies during high wildfire danger. During the pilot project phase (one year period), the cost to administer, maintain, and operate the system is included in the agreement with the U.C. San Diego. The Water Agency will return to the Board before the end of the pilot phase for authority to fund future costs to operate the system.

4 Potential Future Expansion The Lake Sonoma Fire Camera Project is anticipated to be the initial phase of a broader regional network of fire cameras. To that end, the County of Sonoma is currently developing a grant application, due in September 2018, for the FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program that would fund the Sonoma County Fire Early Warning Camera System. The camera system proposed under the Project will install an array of High-Definition/4K fire cameras at high-elevation locations throughout Sonoma County. Each camera system will be strategically located to provide comprehensive coverage of the entire County, with a focus on the areas that have the greatest wildfire risk. The Project would also benefit all neighboring Counties (Mendocino, Napa, Lake, and Marin Counties) by providing early fire detection that will prevent wildfire from spreading into these jurisdictions. Project designers will locate the fire cameras and their associated microwave/towers to create an independent microwave network that provides Sonoma County with the high bandwidth data needed for the cameras. Project designers will also ensure that this networked array of cameras will have multiple pathways, creating a mesh network, to ensure the redundancy network as a whole can survive some components failing during a natural disaster. In addition, there have been preliminary planning discussions with neighboring counties and PG&E on the design of a regional fire camera network that could include Sonoma, Napa, Marin, Mendocino, and Lake Counties. Local, regional, and state partnering agencies will continue planning for the expansion of the county-wide fire camera network and a regional fire camera network including identification of potential funding sources. Requested Actions: In order to implement the proposed fire camera network system in a timely manner, staff requests the Water Agency s Board of Directors authorize the Water Agency s General Manager to execute an agreement (in a form approved by County Counsel) with The Regents of the University of California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (U.C. San Diego), on behalf of the AlertWildfire consortium of universities, for installation, first year of operation, and administration of the Lake Sonoma Watershed Fire Camera Pilot Project in the amount of $422,037. Staff further recommends that the Water Agency s Board of Directors authorize its General Manager, and the County s Board of Supervisors authorize the General Services Director, the Sonoma County Sheriff, and the Information Services Director to execute or amend agreements between public agencies, other County Departments, and with property owners as needed to support the planning, installation, and operations of the Project. Such action will include a delegation of authority to the General Services Director to negotiate and execute any amendments to real property agreements regarding the Mt. Jackson, Pine Mountain, Geyser Peak, and Oakridge sites needed in order to authorize the installation and operation of the pilot project at those locations (Attachment A). Prior Board Actions: None Strategic Plan Alignment Goal 3: Invest in the Future Our Organization Goal 3: Continue to improve emergency preparation and response to natural disasters.

5 The fire camera network will support the Water Agency s goal to protect our main water supply, Lake Sonoma. A major wildfire could result in catastrophic sedimentation or landslides that would threaten the lake s water supply function, water quality, downstream forest health, and endangered species in the Russian River watershed. Fiscal Summary Expenditures Funding Sources FY Adopted Budgeted Expenses $477,037 Additional Appropriation Requested Total Expenditures General Fund/WA GF $477,037 State/Federal Fees/Other Use of Fund Balance Contingencies Total Sources $477,037 FY Projected FY Projected Narrative Explanation of Fiscal Impacts: Budgeted amounts of $422,037, $22,000, $25,000 and $8,000 are available from FY 2018/2019 appropriations in the Water Agency General Fund for the Water Agency s Agreements with The Regents of the University of California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, Sheriff s Office, General Services, and County Information Systems Department, respectively. The Water Agency will fund County departments costs to implement the Watershed Fire Camera Pilot Project, such as equipment for ISD and Sheriff s Office, and Real Estate consultant costs for General Services. As part of Q1 Consolidated Budget Adjustments, these County departments may request additional expenditure appropriations in order to procure project-related equipment and services. Staffing Impacts Position Title (Payroll Classification) Monthly Salary Range (A I Step) Additions (Number) Deletions (Number) Narrative Explanation of Staffing Impacts (If Required): None

6 Attachments: Fire Camera Pilot Project Map (Attachment A) Related Items On File with the Clerk of the Board: None rw S:\Agenda\misc\ WA Lake Sonoma Watershed Fire Camera Pilot Project_summ.docm CF/ Regents of the University of California - Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Agree for Funding of Lake Sonoma Fire Camera Network Pilot Project) 17/ (ID 7029) CF/ Sonoma County Sheriff's Office (Agree for Lake Sonoma Fire Camera Network Pilot Project) 17/ (ID 7048)

7 Attachment A