SB 901 and the vegetation programs it left behind
SB 901, Chapter 626 of the Statutes of 2018, rewrote Public Utilities Code section 8386 into a 20-item annual wildfire mitigation plan. Paragraph (c)(8) was the plan statute's first vegetation requirement, four words long. Its approval, compliance report, independent evaluator and no-diversion machinery still runs vegetation programs today, under different section numbers.
PacifiCorp's California wildfire page tells a reader that Public Utilities Code section 8386 requires "annual wildfire mitigation plans," and that the plan contents are prescribed by "PUC 8386(c)." Both statements were accurate once. Further down the same page sits PacifiCorp's 2026-2028 Base Wildfire Mitigation Plan, filed July 11, 2025, covering three years. The contents list moved from subdivision (c) to subdivision (d) on September 19, 2025. The page is describing SB 901, and SB 901 is still the reason most of the machinery exists.
That gap is the practical problem with SB 901 in 2026. The structure it built is load-bearing. Almost every one of its citations has moved. A contractor reading an older master service agreement, a utility standard, or a prequalification questionnaire will meet SB 901's numbering regularly, and needs to know which parts are live.
What section 8386 said before SB 901
Section 8386 predates SB 901 by two years. It was added by SB 1028, Chapter 598 of the Statutes of 2016, approved September 24, 2016. That version required an annual plan too. Its contents list ran to seven paragraphs, covering responsibilities, objectives, strategies, metrics and self-auditing. Vegetation was absent from it.
What the Commission did with the plan was also different:
The commission shall act expeditiously, but no later than 30 days before the beginning of the compliance period, to review and comment on the electrical corporation's wildfire mitigation plan.
Review and comment is not approval. Under the 2016 section, the plan took effect on the utility's own authority, with 30 days to amend in response to comments.
One clause from 2016 has outlived everything around it. Paragraph (b)(6)(C) required the plan to describe how the utility would audit the effectiveness of its inspections, "including inspections performed by contractors." Contractors were named in the plan statute two years before SB 901, and that sentence is still in the code today, at paragraph (d)(22)(C).
Four words for vegetation, and nineteen other items
SB 901 was approved by the Governor on September 21, 2018, as Chapter 626 of the Statutes of 2018. Section 38 of the bill replaced the seven-item list with twenty items in a new subdivision (c). Two of the twenty were written from scratch.
(8) Plans for vegetation management.
(9) Plans for inspections of the electrical corporation's electrical infrastructure.
Paragraph (c)(8) is the origin of every enhanced vegetation program, pole clearing target and inspection cycle a California contractor now bids against. It is four words long, and it sets no distance, no cycle, no species list and no documentation standard.
The statute obliges the utility to write a vegetation program down and commit to it. It leaves the content of that program to the utility, and to the agency that reviews the plan. What "enhanced" actually bought at each utility came out of that gap.
So did the 12-foot clearance at time of work, which is defined in Energy Safety's WMP Technical Guidelines. The clearances a saw is held to still come from General Order 95 Rule 35 and Public Resources Code section 4293, both of which SB 901 left alone.
Review became approval, on a three-month clock
SB 901's subdivision (b) is one sentence, and the change is in the fifth and sixth words:
Each electrical corporation shall annually prepare and submit a wildfire mitigation plan to the commission for review and approval, according to a schedule established by the commission, which may allow for the staggering of compliance periods for each electrical corporation.
Subdivision (e) put a clock on it. The Commission had to approve each plan within three months of submission unless it issued a written determination, with reasons, extending the deadline. Subdivision (e) also carried the sentence that has survived every rewrite since: an approved plan stays in effect until the next one is approved.
Three things follow for anyone holding a scope of work. The plan became a document the state signs off on. Approval became dated, so there is always a version in force and a version pending. And the compliance period became something the Commission could stagger, so two utilities could sit on different calendars. The cycle those rules turned into is now three and four years long, and approval takes nine months rather than three.
The compliance loop SB 901 built
Subdivision (h) created the annual review that vegetation programs are still measured by. It set four moving parts.
A compliance report from the utility, three months after the end of its initial compliance period and annually after that.
A list of qualified independent evaluators, published by the Commission in consultation with CAL FIRE, before March 1, 2021 and each March 1 after.
An independent evaluator engaged by the utility, operating under the direction of the Commission's Safety and Enforcement Division, reporting on July 1 each year.
A Commission compliance review completed within 18 months of the utility's report.
Every one of those dates is still recognizable. July 1 is still when the independent evaluator's annual report on compliance lands, and 18 months is still the review window. The section number changed, the agency changed, and the utility's compliance report became a self-evaluation report due on or before April 1. Who audits whom, and on whose direction traces where each of those duties sits now.
Subdivision (h)(2)(B)(i) also gave the evaluator one job worth reading twice: to "determine whether the electrical corporation failed to fund any activities included in its plan." Funding, rather than performance. A program that was promised and then quietly unfunded was the failure mode SB 901 was written around.
The fence around the money
Two short subdivisions did more to shape procurement than the twenty-item list did.
An electrical corporation shall not divert revenues authorized to implement the plan to any activities or investments outside of the plan.
That is subdivision (i) in full. Subdivision (j) required every electrical corporation to establish a memorandum account tracking fire risk mitigation costs not otherwise covered in its revenue requirements, subject to Commission review and disallowance. Subdivision (g) sent the question of whether plan costs were just and reasonable to the general rate case.
Together they explain why the program name on a purchase order matters. Money authorized for a plan program has to be spent on that plan program. A crew doing work the utility cannot map back to a named plan commitment becomes a cost recovery problem. That is why unit definitions and program codes are policed harder than the dollar value of a task order suggests.
The no-diversion sentence survived AB 1054 word for word and now sits at section 8386.3(c)(1), with an advice letter duty attached: the utility has to warn the Commission before its annual vegetation management revenue requirement runs out. The memorandum account fared differently. Section 8386.4(a)(2) now leaves it to the Commission's discretion rather than requiring one.
What the first cycle decided about vegetation
The Commission opened Rulemaking 18-10-007 in October 2018 to implement SB 901, set February 6, 2019 as the filing deadline, and ordered a uniform plan template. Eight filers met the date: PG&E, SCE, SDG&E, PacifiCorp, Bear Valley Electric Service, Liberty Utilities, TransBay Cable and Horizon West Transmission. Administrative Law Judges issued six proposed decisions on April 29, 2019, and the Commission approved all six at its May 30, 2019 voting meeting.
Four of those rulings reached vegetation work directly.
Decision | Filer | What it required on vegetation |
D.19-05-036 | All | Outcome metrics rather than program targets such as tree counts |
D.19-05-037 | PG&E | A certified arborist's opinion and evidence of risk before removing a healthy tree |
D.19-05-038 | SCE | The same arborist requirement, plus verification that vegetation work would occur in the CPUC's High Fire-Threat Districts |
D.19-05-039 | SDG&E | A 25-foot post-trim clearance only where supported by evidence, with detailed guidelines due in the next plan |
The guidance decision is the one that still shapes how a program is judged. It required filers to measure "whether the mitigation reduces the risk of its electrical lines and equipment causing a catastrophic wildfire" rather than "program targets (e.g., number of trees cut or miles of covered conductor installed)." A contractor is paid by the unit and the utility is graded on the outcome. That tension was written into the first cycle of SB 901 review and survives it.
The arborist requirement is worth noticing for a different reason. It came from a plan review decision rather than from a statute or a general order, and it landed on the paperwork behind a removal. Requirements of that kind are how the four words in paragraph (c)(8) acquired content.
Penalties, and two words that changed
SB 901 added section 8386.1, which read:
The commission shall assess penalties on an electrical corporation that fails to substantially comply with its plan.
The section today reads:
The commission may assess penalties on an electrical corporation that fails to comply with its plan.
Two changes, in opposite directions. "Shall" became "may," which makes a penalty discretionary. "Substantially comply" became "comply," which lowers the threshold that triggers the discretion. The current version was last amended by SB 254, effective September 19, 2025. AB 1054 left the section alone.
The section has always been silent on what a penalty costs and on who bears it. The seven factors it lists are all about the corporation's own conduct: severity, prior-year compliance, self-reporting, corrective action, knowledge, repetition, and anything else the Commission establishes. All seven stop at the corporation. A penalty reaches a contractor by contract, through indemnity and performance clauses.
Where SB 901's money actually went
Section 45 of the bill made two standing appropriations from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in each Budget Act through the 2023-24 fiscal year, together worth $200 million a year:
$165,000,000 a year to CAL FIRE for healthy forest and fire prevention programs and projects.
$35,000,000 a year to CAL FIRE for prescribed fire and other fuel reduction projects, including year-round prescribed fire crews.
Both appropriations stop at CAL FIRE. Utility vegetation management is funded through rates instead, which is the whole point of subdivisions (g), (i) and (j). A procurement team tracing the money behind a line clearance contract lands in a general rate case, where the plan is what justifies the amount.
SB 901 also created, in Public Resources Code section 4205, a five-member Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Cost and Recovery inside the Office of Planning and Research. Its work fed directly into AB 1054 the following year.
A municipal utility still runs on SB 901's sentence
Section 38 of SB 901 rewrote section 8386 for investor-owned utilities. Section 42 rewrote section 8387 for local publicly owned electric utilities and electrical cooperatives, on the same pattern: a plan before January 1, 2020, annually after that, with a list of things the plan must consider. Subparagraph (b)(2)(H) of that list reads, in full, "Plans for vegetation management."
Those four words are still there, unamended, eight years later. What changed is the calendar and the destination. After January 1, 2026, a publicly owned utility or cooperative submits its plan to the California Wildfire Safety Advisory Board at least once every four years, on a schedule the board sets. No Energy Safety approval decision stands behind it and no safety certification depends on it.
For a bidder, that is a real difference in what the plan can be relied on to say. An investor-owned utility's vegetation commitments have been reviewed, approved and audited by a state agency, and are public. A municipal utility's plan has been considered by its own governing board. The commitments in it bind just as tightly as a contractual matter. The verification behind them is a board vote rather than an agency decision.
Where this lands on a contract
SB 901 appears in contract documents in three forms, and all three are stale.
A citation to "SB 901" as the governing authority for a wildfire mitigation plan is out of date by two statutes. A citation to an annual plan is out of date by a cycle. A citation to a subdivision letter in section 8386 is out of date by one relettering. The requirements usually still exist. They have moved.
SB 901 provision | What it required | Where it lives today |
8386(c)(8) | Plans for vegetation management | 8386(d)(9) |
8386(c)(9) | Plans for inspections of infrastructure | 8386(d)(10) |
8386(c)(13) | Workforce showing, counting contracted employees | 8386(d)(16) |
8386(c)(19)(C) | Audit of inspections, including by contractors | 8386(d)(22)(C) |
8386(e) | Plan approval within three months | 8386.3(a)(1)(A), now nine months |
8386(h)(1) | Annual compliance report | 8386.3(b)(1), a self-evaluation report due April 1 |
8386(h)(2)(B)(i) | Independent evaluator report on July 1 | 8386.3(b)(2)(B)(i) |
8386(i) | No diversion of plan revenues | 8386.3(c)(1) |
8386(j) | Memorandum account | 8386.4(a)(2), now discretionary |
8386.1 | Penalties for noncompliance | 8386.1, amended |
8386.5 | CPUC and CAL FIRE memorandum of understanding | 8386.5, with Energy Safety added |
Three practical consequences follow.
First, check the version. A flow-down clause that binds a subcontractor to "the utility's wildfire mitigation plan as required by SB 901" is binding them to a document that has been superseded several times over. Name the plan, the cycle and the revision instead.
Second, read the statute for structure and the plan for the specification. The paragraph that governs vegetation management is four words long, and it was four words long in 2018. Every distance, cycle, form and pass rate a crew is held to comes from the utility's own plan, Energy Safety's guidelines, and the general orders. A scope of work that cites section 8386 for a clearance points at the wrong document, and somebody will have to decide what was meant.
Third, read the money clauses before the work clauses. The no-diversion rule is the reason a unit has to be coded to a plan program, and the reason a utility holds budget inside a program when a crew finishes early. It was SB 901's shortest subdivision and it is the one most likely to change what a crew does in the last quarter of a program year.
Further reading
How California utility Wildfire Mitigation Plans work under AB 1054: The statute that rebuilt SB 901's plan regime a year later.
What Public Utilities Code section 8386 requires: The section SB 901 rewrote, as it reads today.
The three-year WMP cycle and what changes between filings: The calendar that replaced SB 901's annual filing.
Frequently asked questions
Is SB 901 still the law behind California wildfire mitigation plans?
Partly. SB 901 created the plan structure, and the structure survives. The sections it wrote have been replaced twice: AB 1054 moved approval, compliance reporting and the independent evaluator out of section 8386 and into section 8386.3 in 2019, and SB 254 relettered section 8386 on September 19, 2025. A document citing section 8386(c)(8) for vegetation management is citing a paragraph that is now section 8386(d)(9).
Did SB 901 set a clearance distance?
No. The whole of what SB 901 required on vegetation was section 8386(c)(8): 'Plans for vegetation management.' Clearance distances come from General Order 95 Rule 35 and Public Resources Code section 4293. Program distances such as the 12 feet at time of work in enhanced vegetation management come from the utility's plan and Energy Safety's WMP Technical Guidelines, not from the statute.
Did SB 901 pay for utility vegetation management?
No. Section 45 of SB 901 appropriated $165 million and $35 million a year from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund through the 2023-24 fiscal year, and both appropriations went to the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection for forest health, prescribed fire and fuel reduction. Utility vegetation management is funded through rates, which is what section 8386(g) and the memorandum account in section 8386(j) addressed.
Does SB 901 still govern a municipal utility's plan?
Its words do. SB 901 rewrote section 8387 for local publicly owned electric utilities and electrical cooperatives, and subparagraph (b)(2)(H) of that section reads 'Plans for vegetation management.' Those four words are unchanged. What changed is the calendar: after January 1, 2026, the plan goes to the California Wildfire Safety Advisory Board at least once every four years rather than annually.
What did the first round of SB 901 plan review actually decide about vegetation?
Eight filers submitted plans on February 6, 2019, and the CPUC approved six decisions on May 30, 2019. The guidance decision, D.19-05-036, required filers to measure outcomes rather than program targets such as tree counts. The PG&E and SCE decisions required a certified arborist's opinion and evidence of risk before removing a healthy tree. The SDG&E decision allowed a 25-foot post-trim clearance only where supported by evidence.
