14 CCR 1257: which trees are exempt, and the records that prove it

14 CCR 1257 exempts three things from PRC 4293 clearance in State Responsibility Areas: conductors that are intact tree wire, intact aerial cable, or carried on sound living trunks; the areas listed in 14 CCR 1255(c); and Exempt Trees confirmed by a Certified Arborist or Registered Professional Forester, carrying annual inspection and a July 1 report to CAL FIRE.

A 14-inch valley oak stands 30 inches from the center phase of a 12 kV feeder on brush covered land inside a State Responsibility Area. Against PRC 4293(a)'s four feet that span is 18 inches short, and the fix is a cut. Against 14 CCR 1257(a)(3) the same tree may owe nothing at all.

What separates the two answers is not the distance. It is three measurements taken by a named professional, an entry in a database with a coordinate in it, and a report that reaches CAL FIRE by July 1. The exemption is real, it is worth several thousand dollars a year on a single corridor, and every part of it is a record.

The section, and the three exits it opens

Section 1257 is headed "Exempt Minimum Clearance Provisions-PRC 4293," and its opening line fixes both what it releases and where:

(a) The minimum clearance provisions of PRC 4293 applicable in State Responsibility Areas are exempted:

Two limits are already in that sentence. The section reaches the minimum clearance provisions of PRC 4293, which is the four, six and ten feet in subdivisions (a) through (c) and nothing else in the statute. And it reaches them in State Responsibility Areas. That is the same footprint 14 CCR 1252 draws when it says the Director will apply PRC 4292 through 4296 on the four ground cover types within those areas "unless specifically exempted by 14 CCR 1255 and 1257."

Below the chapeau are three exits, and they are not alike:

Subsection	What is exempted	What has to be true
(a)(1)	The span, by conductor type	Tree wire or aerial cable with its covering intact, or conductors carried on sound living trunks
(a)(2)	The span, by ground type	The location is one of the eight areas in 14 CCR 1255(c) and fire will not propagate there
(a)(3)	The individual tree	Three measurements, confirmed by a named professional, plus four continuing duties

Then subsection (b) takes all three back where the tree is a hazard tree.

The distinction between the first two and the third is worth marking before anything else, because it decides what a compliance file is holding. Under (a)(1) and (a)(2) the exemption is a property of the facility or the ground, it is proved by a photograph or a land use finding, and it ends when that condition ends.

Under (a)(3) the exemption is a property of one tree, it is granted by a professional's confirmation, and it creates an ongoing obligation that outlasts the site visit. A utility with a hundred Exempt Trees has a hundred rows in a database it must report to the state every year. A utility with a hundred spans of intact tree wire owes nobody a filing.

Tree wire and aerial cable: an exemption that ends the day the covering does

Subsection (a)(1) lists three conductor conditions:

(1) Where conductors are: (A) insulated tree wire, maintained with the high density, abrasion resistant outer covering intact, or (B) insulated self-supporting aerial cable, maintained with the insulation intact, or (C) supported by sound and living tree trunks from which all dead or decadent branches have been removed.

Both of the first two hang on one participle. Maintained with the covering intact is a present condition, not a construction specification, so the exemption is not earned at installation and held forever.

It is held for exactly as long as the covering is whole, and it lapses at the first abrasion, splice failure or squirrel chew, at the point on the span where that damage is, on the day it happens. Nothing in the section requires the utility to notice. The span is either exempt or it is not, and the fact that decides it is a physical condition an inspector can photograph.

Both terms are defined in 14 CCR 1251, and the definitions are narrower than field usage. "Tree wire" is "an insulated conductor covered with a high abrasion resistant, usually non-metallic, outer covering, designed and manufactured to carry electrical current for installation on overhead pole lines or other similar overhead structures."

"Self-supporting aerial cable" is "an assembly of abrasion resistant insulated conductors supported by a messenger cable which is normally grounded." A covered conductor strung without a messenger is not aerial cable under that definition, and weather-resistant covering applied for reasons other than insulation is not obviously tree wire under this one.

The Board of Forestry has said in writing that this is a problem. Its 2019 initial statement of reasons for the Utility Clearance Exemptions, 2019 rulemaking proposed deleting the term outright, on the ground that "tree wire is not a standardized term in the electrical utility industry, causing confusion and inadvertent noncompliance with these regulations."

The same document proposed deleting subsections (a)(1)(A) and (B) altogether. The stated reason was that "meetings with utility stakeholders indicated that in their normal business practices, they treat all conductors as un-insulated and perform the required vegetation clearance, so there was no need to exempt this equipment from the clearance standards."

That rulemaking did not take effect. Section 1257 has had no substantive amendment since February 8, 2012, and its only later change is a change without regulatory effect filed August 1, 2022. So both exemptions are still live, and the Board's own record says utilities largely do not use them. A file that claims one is claiming something the regulator has been told is rare, which is a reason for the photograph to show the covering at the point of contact rather than the reel tag.

Subsection (a)(1)(C) is different in kind. It exempts spans whose conductors are carried on living trunks, which is the same arrangement 14 CCR 1258 makes subject to both statutes as a tree line, and it conditions the exemption on all dead or decadent branches having been removed from the supporting tree. The 2019 package would have ended this one on a schedule:

• No new or reconstructed tree-supported spans in High Fire-Threat District Tiers 2 and 3 after July 1, 2020.

• Every conductor off living trees and onto free-standing poles by July 1, 2025, or on a timeline approved by the Director.

None of that is in the operative regulation. The exemption stands unamended, and what the article does to a tree line is still 1258's plain answer.

The area exemption is 1255(c)'s list, borrowed whole

Subsection (a)(2) is nine words: "On areas described in 14 CCR 1255(c)." It writes no list of its own. It reaches across to the pole firebreak exemptions and takes one subsection of them, which is the only place the PRC 4292 pair and the PRC 4293 pair of Article 4 touch.

What it borrows is conditional on its first clause. 14 CCR 1255(c) exempts "the following areas if fire will not propagate thereon," and then names eight:

• Fields planted to row crops.

• Plowed or cultivated fields.

• Producing vineyards that are plowed or cultivated.

• Fields in nonflammable summer fallow.

• Irrigated pasture land.

• Orchards of fruit, nut or citrus trees that are plowed or cultivated.

• Christmas tree farms that are plowed or cultivated.

• Swamp, marsh or bog land.

Three of the eight carry a cultivation qualifier and the qualifier is doing work. A producing vineyard that has gone to no-till cover cropping is a producing vineyard, and it is not a "producing vineyard that is plowed or cultivated." An almond orchard with a resident vegetation floor managed by mowing is not a "plowed or cultivated" orchard.

The list was written when clean cultivation was the default and it has not moved since; the ground has. And the whole list sits under a condition, if fire will not propagate thereon. That is a finding about the fuel present on the day rather than a land use category. An orchard on a February inspection and the same orchard in an August with dry mown residue between the rows are not automatically the same answer.

That makes this the exemption most likely to be asserted from a map layer. The defensible version of the claim is a dated observation of the ground cover and its condition, taken on the visit, alongside the crop type. What else changes on a span through an orchard belongs to its own page; what 1257(a)(2) contributes is that the exemption is 1255(c)'s, including 1255(c)'s condition, and a file citing 1257(a)(2) without naming which of the eight areas applies has not made the claim.

What makes a tree an Exempt Tree

Subsection (a)(3) is the substance of the section, and it opens by drawing a band:

(3) For mature trees ("Exempt Trees") whose trunks and major limbs are located more than six inches, but less than the distance required for clearance by PRC 4293, from primary distribution equipment (conductor and energy carrying hardware, generally less than 35 kilovolts).

The band has a floor and a ceiling. Below six inches there is no exemption at all; above the PRC 4293 distance none is needed. On a 12 kV feeder in a State Responsibility Area that band runs from six inches to 48 inches, and the tree at 30 inches in the opening paragraph sits inside it. A limb five inches off the same phase is outside the band on the low side, and it is therefore both non-exempt and non-compliant at once.

Two words in the parenthetical widen the target beyond the wire. Energy carrying hardware pulls in the cutout, the jumper, the tap connector and the transformer bushing, which on a distribution tap are usually the closest energized parts to any tree. And generally less than 35 kilovolts is the only voltage indication in the section. It is descriptive, not a limit, but it means the regime was drawn for distribution and does not obviously fit a 115 kV alignment.

Three criteria then decide whether a tree in the band qualifies:

(A) Exempt Trees must meet all of the following criteria, as confirmed by a Certified Arborist or a Registered Professional Forester: 1. The tree or limb must be six (6) inches or more from the line at all times. 2. The size of the tree or limb at the conductor level must be at least six (6) inches in diameter. 3. The tree must not have "scaffold branches," below eight and one-half feet from the ground (so the tree can not be easily climbed).

All of the following, so failing one fails the tree.

The first criterion is not the same statement as the band above it. "At all times" imports the movement the section is otherwise silent about, and 14 CCR 1256 is where that movement is described:

• Any position through which the conductor may move given its size, material and span length.

• Any position through which the vegetation may sway given foreseeable wind velocities, temperature, and the location, height and species of the tree.

Six inches measured on a still morning is not six inches at all times. A flexible bay laurel on the windward side of a span and a rigid interior live oak of the same diameter give different answers to the same criterion.

The second criterion answers the first. A limb at least six inches in diameter where it passes the conductor is stiff enough that the six inches is likely to survive a wind, which is why the two numbers appear together. It is also the criterion that keeps small regrowth out of the regime: a two-inch sprout eight inches off a phase is not an Exempt Tree, whatever its distance.

The third criterion is not a fire criterion at all, and the regulation says so in its own parenthetical: so the tree can not be easily climbed. It is a public safety test about a person, most obviously a child, reaching a conductor from the tree. It is also a second clearing height inside one article.

14 CCR 1254(b) requires that around a subject pole "all limbs and foliage of living trees shall be removed up to a height of 2.4 m (8 feet)." An Exempt Tree has to be clear of scaffold branches to eight and one-half. Two provisions, six inches of difference, and a crew working from one number at the pole and the other at the tree will get one of them wrong unless the work order names which is which.

"Scaffold branches" is not defined in 14 CCR 1251, which defines eight other terms for this article. In arboriculture it means the permanent structural limbs arising from the trunk. Whether a low water sprout or a small lateral is a scaffold branch is a judgment, and it is the confirming professional's judgment, which is the next thing the subsection names.

The same six-inch tree gets a different answer on the Commission's side of the file, from a rule with different conditions and no filing. How Rule 35's Exception 4 and 14 CCR 1257(a)(3) differ on the same trunk is set out on its own page, and the short version is that one of the two exemptions is free and this one is not.

The confirmation is a person, and only one of the two credentials is a license

The criteria are qualified by five words that turn a measurement into an attestation: "as confirmed by a Certified Arborist or a Registered Professional Forester." Nobody else's confirmation satisfies the subsection. A qualified pre-inspector's reading, a GIS classification and a contractor's field note are evidence, and none of them is the confirmation the regulation asks for.

The two credentials are not equivalent, and neither is defined in Article 4.

A Registered Professional Forester is a California state license. The Professional Foresters Law at Public Resources Code sections 750 through 783 requires registration to practice forestry in the state. The Board of Forestry and Fire Protection administers it through the Professional Foresters Examining Committee. Every RPF has a license number that appears on a roster the Board publishes. That is a fact an evaluator can check in a minute against the name in a database row.

"Certified Arborist" is not a California license and is not certified by anyone the regulation names. In practice it means the International Society of Arboriculture credential, which carries a certification number and an expiration date and is verifiable in ISA's own directory.

Because the regulation does not say so, the burden lands on the record: a row attributed to "certified arborist" with no name, number or date has not documented the confirmation the exemption depends on. A row naming the individual, the credential number and the date it was current has.

One ambiguity in this pairing is worth stating rather than papering over. Subsection (a)(3)(B)(1) requires the utility to "inspect Exempt Trees annually to verify they continue to meet the criteria in 14 CCR 1257(a)(3)," and the criteria in (a)(3) include the words "as confirmed by a Certified Arborist or a Registered Professional Forester."

Read strictly, the annual verification is a verification that a confirmed condition still holds, and it is at least arguable that the same class of professional has to make it. The regulation does not say. CAL FIRE has published nothing on the point.

Its 2021 California Power Line Fire Prevention Field Guide gives the whole regime one sentence, at page 22, noting only that "Title 14, Section 1257 exempts conductors from needing PRC 4293 vegetation clearance where certain types of conductors or exempt trees exist."

Where the text is open and the guidance is silent, the decision belongs to the Director or the agency with primary fire protection responsibility for the area, and the utility carries the exposure in the meantime. The cheaper reading is not the one to build a hundred-tree program on.

The four duties in (a)(3)(B)

The exemption is conditional on four continuing obligations, and the subsection binds each utility company whose primary distribution conductors run inside a State Responsibility Area:

(B) All Utility Companies with primary distribution conductors in State Responsibility Areas (SRA) of California shall: 1. Inspect Exempt Trees annually to verify they continue to meet the criteria in 14 CCR 1257(a)(3). 2. Maintain a database of information about Exempt Trees that includes 1) location, using the format of latitude/longitude in decimal degrees (DDD.DDDD Datum WGS84); 2) species; and 3) last date of inspection. If any Utility does not currently maintain such a database it must establish one and provide its initial report to CAL FIRE by July 1, 2013. Utilities may request, and the Director may approve, an extension of time in which to achieve compliance with this reporting requirement. 3. Report the information required pursuant to 14 CCR 1257(a)(B)(2) above, in an electronically researchable format, annually to CAL FIRE by July 1 of each year for the previous calendar year. 4. When constructing, installing, replacing, or maintaining primary distribution equipment, prevent the creation of new Exempt Trees, to the extent feasible.

The inspection is annual, and annual is the whole test. There is no cycle, no tier adjustment and no relationship to the GO 165 intervals. A tree inspected on September 12, 2025 and not again until October 3, 2026 has gone thirteen months, and the subsection gives no grace.

The database format is specified to four decimal places, and that precision is coarser than it looks. One ten-thousandth of a degree of latitude is about 36 feet on the ground. At 38 degrees north, one ten-thousandth of a degree of longitude is about 29 feet. So DDD.DDDD locates a tree inside a cell roughly 36 feet by 29 feet, which is fine for identifying a 200 foot span and not always enough to distinguish two exempt oaks growing 20 feet apart under the same conductor.

The regulation names a coordinate, a species and a date, and does not require a tree identifier, a pole number or a circuit. Adding those is the utility's own decision and it is the difference between a database that can be audited tree by tree and one that can only be audited span by span. The datum is named too, so a coordinate exported from a state plane dataset without recording the transformation is not in the format the subsection asks for.

The reporting deadline is July 1 and the reporting period is the previous calendar year. The report filed July 1, 2026 covers calendar 2025, so the September 12, 2025 inspection above first reaches CAL FIRE nine and a half months after it happened.

The initial-report date of July 1, 2013 is spent, and it matters now only for a utility standing up a database late. The extension clause remains available, and the Director grants it on request. It produces a dated approval that belongs in the file next to the report it excuses.

The subsection also contains a citation error that survives in the operative text. Duty 3 requires reporting "the information required pursuant to 14 CCR 1257(a)(B)(2) above." There is no subsection (a)(B) in section 1257. The intended reference is (a)(3)(B)(2), the database duty immediately above it, and the Board's own 2019 rule text carried the same broken cite forward. It changes nothing about what is owed, and it is worth knowing before somebody spends an afternoon looking for a subsection that does not exist.

The fourth duty is the only qualified one. Prevent the creation of new Exempt Trees, to the extent feasible is a design obligation attached to construction, installation, replacement and maintenance of primary distribution equipment, and "to the extent feasible" is the only softening phrase anywhere in (a)(3).

It means a pole set or a reconductor that leaves a new tree in the six-inch-to-four-foot band is a decision the utility should be able to explain. The explanation belongs in the construction record rather than in the vegetation record, because that is where the alternative was rejected.

(a)(3)(C), the subsection nobody quotes

The last piece of the Exempt Tree regime is the one most often missing from a program document:

(C) Where there are site specific indications that a conductor has or will come into contact with an Exempt Tree, or portion thereof as described above, the condition will be corrected either by altering the tree or by applying an engineering solution. The actions taken will be documented in that utility's Exempt Tree database.

Three things in that sentence are worth reading slowly.

The trigger is site specific indications that a conductor has or will come into contact. Not contact. Not a measured encroachment past six inches. Indications, and anticipated contact counts. Conductor burn on bark, a rubbed limb, a scorched leaf cluster, a swing-in visible on a windy day: any of those is an indication, and the duty attaches on the observation rather than on the measurement.

The remedies are two and the regulation gives no preference. Altering the tree is the pruning answer. An engineering solution is the hardware answer. The 2019 proposal would have added a worked example to the text, "such as a non-conductive cross arm."

The Board explained in its statement of reasons that the goal was to encourage the hardware option over pruning that may harm a mature tree. That example never became operative. The regulation as it stands names the category and leaves the choice open, which means a file that records a trim without recording why the engineering option was not taken has documented half the decision.

And the third thing is a documentation duty for work performed. Everywhere else in Article 4 the obligations are physical conditions and nobody is asked to write anything down; the article's silence on records is one of its defining features.

The Exempt Tree regime is the exception, and it carries two documentation duties rather than one: the database and annual report in (B), and this record of corrective action in (C). Both live in the same database, which means the Exempt Tree table is not a register of exemptions. It is a work record, and the state reads it once a year.

Subsection (b) withholds every exemption from a hazard tree

The section ends in one sentence that reaches back over everything above it:

(b) These exemptions do not apply to "Hazard Trees" as identified and explained on pages 1-20 through 1-24 in the Department's "Powerline Fire Prevention Field Guide" dated November 2008.

These exemptions, plural, and the subsection sits at the level of (a) rather than inside (a)(3). So a hazard tree finding does not merely disqualify a tree from the Exempt Tree regime. It removes the conductor exemptions and the area exemption too. A hazard tree leaning over a span of intact tree wire in a plowed orchard is outside all three exits at once.

The identification is incorporated by reference, and the reference has a problem an evaluator will find if they follow it. The August 1, 2022 change without regulatory effect updated the URL in this subsection, because the original address at cdfdata.fire.ca.gov had gone dead. The copy now served at the Board's address is a reflowed, accessibility-remediated edition of the November 2008 guide, paginated in a single sequence.

Its contents place "12. Hazardous Tree Identification" at page 32, running with the sections that follow it through about page 38. Pages 20 through 24 of that copy are the inspection policy sections: utility company inspections, fire protection agency inspections, joint inspections, ground inspections, aerial inspections and location identification. There is no page numbered 1-20 in it at all.

So the operative regulation incorporates a page range that does not exist in the document its own link returns. That is not a reason to ignore subsection (b), because the substance it points at is plainly the hazardous tree identification material and the whole utility industry reads it that way.

It is a reason for the finding in the file to name the defect observed rather than cite the page range, and for what actually makes a tree a hazard tree to be recorded as an arborist's observation against stated criteria.

The Board proposed fixing this in 2019 by deleting the reference to the guide entirely and replacing it with a description: "trees subject to injury, disease, death, or insect or fungus attacks." Its reasoning was that the guide "is updated irregularly and a direct reference to it will lead to confusion and a possible lack of compliance if the field guide is updated but the regulation is not revised to reflect the latest version."

The regulation was not revised. The 2021 field guide has since replaced the 2008 guide in the field, its hazard tree material runs from page 41 to page 52 in an entirely different structure, and subsection (b) still points at the 2008 edition.

Where the exemption stops

Section 1257's authority note cites Public Resources Code sections 4111 and 4293 and references sections 4293 and 4296. Nothing else is in reach, and four consequences follow.

It does not touch PRC 4292. The ten foot firebreak around a subject pole is exempted by 14 CCR 1255, not by this section, and 1255's note names only PRC 4292. An Exempt Tree standing inside the cylindroid around a subject pole is exempt from the conductor clearance and still inside the firebreak, and 1254(b) still asks for limbs and foliage removed to eight feet.

It does not touch the felling duty in PRC 4293's own trailing paragraph. That paragraph requires dead, old decadent or rotten trees, trees weakened by decay or disease, and trees leaning toward the line to be felled, cut or trimmed, and it carries no distance. Section 1257 exempts the minimum clearance provisions. A leaning tree is in scope under the trailing paragraph whether or not it is six inches from the wire, which is the same ground subsection (b) covers from the other direction.

It does not touch General Order 95. Rule 35 and Table 1 are the Commission's, adopted under a different code, and no CAL FIRE regulation exempts a span from them. A tree properly exempt under 1257(a)(3) at eight inches from a 12 kV phase is ten inches inside Table 1 Case 13's 18 inches and forty inches inside Case 14's 48. Whether that span is a nonconformance turns on Rule 35's own Exception 4 and on nothing in this section. Neither rule discharges the other.

It does not run outside a State Responsibility Area. The chapeau says so. On Local Responsibility Area or federal land PRC 4293 still reads on its own terms and 14 CCR 1257 supplies no exemption from it, because the section is drafted for the area 1252 makes the standing determination for.

One more limit is implicit in the numbers. The Exempt Tree regime is written for primary distribution equipment "generally less than 35 kilovolts." On transmission the governing clearance is a separately derived distance under a different regime, and NERC FAC-003's minimum vegetation clearance distance has no exemption resembling this one.

Which text of 1257 is the operative one

More field programs read this section in CAL FIRE's field guide than in the California Code of Regulations, and on this section the two do not match.

The 2021 California Power Line Fire Prevention Field Guide reprints it at page 35 under a heading borrowed from section 1256, "1257: Minimum Clearance Provisions - PRC 4293." Beneath it is a version with no Exempt Trees subsection, no exemption for conductors supported by living trunks, no hazard tree carve-out, and an "Except" clause about dead, decadent, rotten, weakened and leaning trees that appears nowhere in the operative section.

A utility building an exemption argument from that page is building it from text that predates the February 8, 2012 repeal and re-adoption of (a)(3), and the entire annual reporting obligation is invisible in it.

The operative history is short and easy to check.

Filed	Operative	What changed
October 24, 2005	November 23, 2005	Amendment
April 30, 2007	May 30, 2007	New subsection and amendment. Where the Exempt Tree regime and the PRC 4111 authority citation first appear
November 26, 2008	December 26, 2008	Amendment
February 1, 2010	February 1, 2010	Amendment, operative the same day
February 8, 2012	February 8, 2012	Repealer and new subsection with amendments
August 1, 2022	Not stated	Change without regulatory effect. By definition it could not alter meaning, and in fact it repaired the dead link in subsection (b)

Nothing since. The Utility Clearance Exemptions, 2019 package is not law, and none of its numbering is either. It would have renumbered (a)(3)(A) to (b), (a)(3)(B) to (c) and (a)(3)(C) to (d), deleted the tree wire and aerial cable exemptions, and put an end date on tree-supported conductors. A citation to "1257(c)" is a citation to a proposal.

Where else the field guide's reprint of Article 4 differs from the regulation is its own subject. On this section the difference is the whole Exempt Tree regime, which is also the only part of Article 4 that generates a filing.

What the record has to name

An exemption claimed under 1257 is proved by an artifact, and the artifact differs by which of the three exits was used.

For a conductor exemption under (a)(1), the span identifier, the subsection letter, and dated evidence that the covering is intact at the point where the vegetation is closest, which in practice is a photograph taken at that point rather than a materials record from construction. For (a)(1)(C), add the confirmation that dead and decadent branches have been removed from the supporting tree, and the date.

For an area exemption under (a)(2), the parcel, which of the eight areas in 14 CCR 1255(c) applies, and the observed ground condition on the date of the visit supporting the finding that fire will not propagate there. Naming the crop is not the same as making the finding.

For an Exempt Tree under (a)(3), one row per tree, holding more than the regulation lists. The three required fields are the coordinate in DDD.DDDD on WGS84, the species, and the last inspection date. The fields that make the row defensible are the ones the section implies and does not require:

• A tree identifier.

• The circuit and structure it belongs to.

• The measured distance to the nearest energized part, and what that part was.

• The diameter at conductor level.

• The scaffold branch finding.

• The name, credential type, credential number and date of the Certified Arborist or Registered Professional Forester who confirmed it.

Then the annual re-inspection date, and for anything triggering (a)(3)(C), the indication observed, the remedy chosen, why the other remedy was not, and the date the work was done.

Above the rows sit two program-level artifacts. The report transmitted to CAL FIRE by July 1, with its date, its format and the calendar year it covers, kept as sent rather than regenerated from a live table, because a report regenerated in 2027 is not evidence of what was filed in 2026. And any extension the Director approved, with its date and its terms.

The reason for the extra fields is not tidiness. The three fields the regulation names are enough to show that a database exists and not enough to show that any particular tree qualified. An evaluator reading a row that says only 38.4271, -122.7301, Quercus lobata, 2026-04-18 has been told a tree was looked at.

A row that also names who confirmed the six inches, at what diameter, against which conductor, is the exemption itself. What a working clearance record holds around it, and how long each part has to be kept, are their own subjects; the part 1257 contributes is that on this one section the record is not evidence of compliance, it is the condition of it.

Further reading

• PRC 4293: radial clearance in State Responsibility Areas: The standard this section exempts, and the felling duty in the same statute that it does not touch.

• GO 95 vs PRC 4293: two clearance rules on the same span: Why an Exempt Tree under 1257 can still be a Rule 35 nonconformance.

• Title 14 CCR sections 1250 to 1258: the implementing rules: The article this section sits in, and the authority note that makes 1257 the outlier.

Frequently asked questions

What is an Exempt Tree under 14 CCR 1257?

A mature tree whose trunk and major limbs sit more than six inches, but less than PRC 4293's required clearance, from primary distribution equipment, and which meets three criteria confirmed by a Certified Arborist or a Registered Professional Forester: six inches or more from the line at all times, at least six inches in diameter at conductor level, and no scaffold branches below eight and one-half feet from the ground.

What does a utility have to report to CAL FIRE about Exempt Trees?

14 CCR 1257(a)(3)(B) requires a database giving each Exempt Tree's location as latitude and longitude in decimal degrees, DDD.DDDD on Datum WGS84, its species, and its last date of inspection, reported in an electronically researchable format annually to CAL FIRE by July 1 of each year for the previous calendar year. The trees must also be inspected annually.

Does 14 CCR 1257 exempt a tree from GO 95 Rule 35?

No. Section 1257 exempts the minimum clearance provisions of PRC 4293, and its authority note cites only PRC 4111 and 4293. On a Commission-jurisdictional line the GO 95 Table 1 clearance still applies, and Rule 35's own Exception 4 is a separate provision with separate conditions and no filing.

Does an exemption under 1257 survive if the tree is a hazard tree?

No. Subsection (b) states that these exemptions do not apply to Hazard Trees as identified and explained on pages 1-20 through 1-24 of the Department's November 2008 Powerline Fire Prevention Field Guide. A hazard tree finding removes every exemption in the section, including the conductor exemptions in (a)(1).

Is the version of 1257 printed in CAL FIRE's field guide the operative text?

No. The 2021 California Power Line Fire Prevention Field Guide prints 1257 at page 35 under the heading 'Minimum Clearance Provisions - PRC 4293,' in a form with no Exempt Trees subsection, no tree trunk support exemption and no hazard tree carve-out. The operative subsection (a)(3) was repealed and re-adopted on February 8, 2012, and none of it appears in that reprint.