By Thomas Hughes

Bay City News

A Black Hawk helicopter modified to haul 900 gallons of water will be boosting the Marin County Fire Department’s aerial resources this fire season in a pilot program with PG&E.

The Marin County Board of Supervisors at its regular meeting Tuesday authorized the fire department’s chief to enter into an agreement with PG&E for the trial program.

PG&E owns the helicopter, which is a Sikorsky UH-60A model. PG&E will pay for the cost of operating the helicopter in county areas for the first two hours of flight time per mission, up to a total of 40 hours of flight time during fire season. It will also cover the cost of staging the helicopter and having pilots on standby. Operators will be from Red Bluff-based PJ Helicopters.

Fires that are burning in state or federal land can be fully reimbursed by relevant partner agencies, according to Marin County Fire Chief Jason Weber, who made the request to the board.

The Black Hawk will be exclusively available to the Marin County Fire Department and partner agencies, which will have the ability to utilize the helicopter in other North Bay Area counties as needed.

Weber said the partnership will provide a resource that the fire department otherwise couldn’t afford.

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“The cost of aircraft is prohibitively expensive, I would say, for small organizations like us or even our local government partners, cities, towns that are out there,” Weber said during his presentation.

The addition of the dedicated helicopter is meant to provide additional capacity when other air resources provided by Cal Fire are tied up elsewhere.

A PG&E spokesman who spoke at the board meeting said it was the first such pilot program the utility had undertaken.

“This partnership represents a pivotal moment in our collective efforts to address the wildfire risk that threatens our communities,” said Mark Quinlan, senior vice president of wildfire & emergency operations at PG&E.

Operational command during fires will go through the fire department’s command center. Requests by partner agencies to use the helicopter will also go through the fire department.

The program will run from July through October.

The location where the helicopter will be staged is still undetermined, but it will be somewhere in the North Bay, according to Weber.

Cal Fire has two aircraft designated to cover Marin County. One is staged at Moffett Federal Airfield in Santa Clara County and the other is stationed at the Boggs Mountain Helitack Base in Lake County.

“This gives us a resource that’s a little bit closer, with the goal that we’re keeping small fires small,” Weber said.

Copyright © 2023 Bay City News, Inc.  All rights reserved.  Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

By Thomas Hughes
Bay City News

Preparations for emergency repairs to the McNears Beach Fishing Pier in San Rafael were approved Tuesday by the Marin County Board of Supervisors, about three months after a concrete vessel came unmoored and smashed into the pier, causing structural damage.

The end of the pier at McNears Beach Park was closed following the March 21 storm damage because of concerns the pier might collapse, but people have been ignoring fencing and signage and passing underneath in kayaks and on the beach at low tide, according to Chris Chamberlain, a Marin County Parks representative.

“We’re concerned about their safety,” Chamberlain told the board.

That added urgency for the Parks department, which requested up to $1.2 million from the board.

The unanimous vote Tuesday allows the director to move forward with putting the project out for competitive bids.

Assessments made by the engineering firm Liftech Consultants Inc. determined the deck of the pier is about 4 inches lower than before the impact and is supported by remaining, damaged concrete piles.  Damage was sustained to a critical concrete pile and joint at the pier head, where the vessel collided. Curbs were damaged, some railings were ruined, and a water line was broken.

But most concerning is the overall structural integrity of the pier, which Liftech’s assessment said was at risk of partial or total collapse.

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The damage “poses an imminent risk to property, human life, and the environment,” the assessment said.

The 40-foot vessel came unmoored during a severe storm. It broke apart upon impact and parts of the boat sank. Submerged wreckage is leaning against another pile and needs to be cleared to determine if further work will be needed.

The situation is even more precarious because of seismic blasts from nearby Dutra San Rafael Rock Quarry that can be felt around the pier, according to the Parks Department report.

Usually, the vessel’s owner would be liable for such repair costs, but the owner did not have insurance, Chamberlain said, in response to a question from Supervisor Eric Lucan.

Permits from regional, state and federal regulators are also needed before construction can begin. Once the work starts, repairs are expected to take 83 days, according to the Parks Department.

Copyright © 2023 Bay City News, Inc.  All rights reserved.  Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

By Kara Manke
UC Berkeley News

As rising seas threaten to flood hundreds of toxic sites along the California coast, the risk of flood-related contamination will fall disproportionately on the state’s most marginalized communities, finds a new study published Tuesday by researchers at UC Berkeley, UCLA and Climate Central.

San Mateo and Alameda counties are projected to host the most at-risk hazardous sites by 2050, but by 2100, Orange County is projected to surpass both as oil and gas wells there and in Los Angeles County face rising coastal flood risks.

Under California’s high-risk aversion scenario, which projects that sea levels could rise by more than 6 feet by the end of the century, the study identified 736 facilities at risk of coastal flooding and an additional 173 with projected groundwater encroachment.

Residents living within 1 kilometer of at-risk sites were more likely than others to be people of color, to be living below the poverty line, to be unemployed or to experience another form of social disadvantage such as linguistic isolation.

As part of the study, the researchers also released a new interactive online tool in English and Spanish that allows users to map toxic sites that are at risk of coastal flooding, either by county or by individual facility.

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A map of hazardous sites at risk of coastal flooding in the San Francisco Bay Area, generated by the new coastal risk screening tool available on the Climate Central website. The colored overlay indicates the poverty level of nearby communities. (Image courtesy Climate Central)

Users can also overlay indicators of nearby residents’ social vulnerability, including the percentage of people who are living below the poverty line, who are experiencing unemployment, or who don’t have a high school degree.

“Sea level rise is like a slow-moving storm that we can anticipate and prepare for,” said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor of public health and of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley and senior author of the paper. “As California invests in community resilience to climate change, it is essential that considerations of environmental justice are at the fore.”

Low-income communities and communities of color already face disproportionate exposure to myriad environmental pollutants, and the threat of additional exposures from sea-level rise will only exacerbate these inequities.

Compared to their neighbors, socially vulnerable residents can also face more challenges to evacuate during a flood and often experience social stressors that can make them more susceptible to the health impacts of pollutant exposures.

“Again, climate change amplifies inequality,” said lead author Lara Cushing, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “Sea level rise will present additional risks of contaminant releases to communities already living with pollution sources in their backyards.”

The study was conducted as part of the Toxic Tides project, which brought together a multidisciplinary research team with community advocacy organizations to understand how rising seas would impact hazardous sites, including refineries, industrial facilities, sewage treatment plants and cleanup sites.

The team released a preliminary set of data and an earlier version of the online mapping tool in November 2021; the new, peer-reviewed study, which appears in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, includes additional analysis about the environmental justice implications of the findings.