Board of Supervisors — 2017-12-21

Hi. Thank you. You. Yeah. Good afternoon and welcome to this special meeting on December 21, 2017 of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in the Santa Barbara Hearing Room. Mr. Allen would you call the roll please?

Mr. Lavinino Here Mr. Williams Here Ms. Wolfe Here Mr Adam

Here

Ms Hartman

CEO Miyasato, do you have a report for us today?

Supervisors and in relation to today's item that's on your agenda I also asked our Fire Chief and our OEM Director to give a brief update on where we are with the fire. We've had good news this morning and so they will give you a brief update and Terri Nessitz will also talk a little bit about a recovery meeting that's happening this Friday.

Well thank you Madam Chair, Board Members, Eric Peterson Fire Chief. I am delighted to report that for all intents and purposes the fire is out. The fact that the perimeter of the fire that is in our area withstood a fairly significant wind event last night gives the incident commanders a very high degree of confidence that it's going to stay put. That's good news. I can kind of tell you that being out in the field, there is sort of a countywide sigh of relief happening and we in the fire service are definitely part of that right now. There's a mass demobilization of personnel equipment, the likes of which we've never seen before.

There's been 8500 people on this fire and so to get all those people and all effort in and of itself. Tomorrow's perimeter map will show all black as opposed to red on the part that has been menacing us for the last week and a half or so. As you know, all evacuation warnings have been lifted roadblocks are being disbanded One bit of good news, the remaining part of the fire that is in the Fed will be taken over by Mark Vontillo's Type 1 Incident Command Team that ran the Whittier Fire. So we have someone back there who knows our local dirt and we can remain pretty confident that that fire won't be able to come back up and over the hill.

Finally I just want to say this has been a real test of our mutual aid system, of the relationships that exist between us in the OP area and law enforcement and the fire agencies on a larger level. The relationships that exists between the federal agencies, the state, CAL FIRE, and all local government. Anytime you're spending $150 million on a fire you can imagine it leads to some very pointed, very candid conversations. And I've been in many of those conversations The relationships that have held this whole thing together have really become apparent in that thing. Everyone has really Finally I want to thank our firefighters of course they've performed admirably. The Sheriff's Department has done amazing work on this fire and OEM Rob Lewin is with us, I have to say everybody that was in there and there were a lot of them in their early getting out late Because the mission was there, they knew that they had to do it.

And it was really inspiring and Mona and I were talking about this the other night. It's really nice to work in a county where people take their job so seriously and take the mission that we're all here for so seriously. They're not asking questions, they're going in there because they know the work needs to get done. And I need to point out Rob Lewin has done astounding work in there. We got the right guy for the job.

He has done a fantastic job of herding the cats. And keeping the wheels on in that building. So thank you.

Madam Chair and Board, Robert Lewin, Director of Office Emergency Management. Thank you Chief for your kind words and back at him. He is the calm in the storm. He's a true leader and we're all better for it. We have many true leaders working for Ms. Miyasato over the last 18 days Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting It did begin with a power outage and we learned about new vulnerabilities in our county. We knew them but now we really know that we're vulnerable in power outages.

We had many events that occurred along the emergency that almost felt like we were in a prepared exercise We had these injects if you will of things like gasoline oil tankers falling over when we're in the middle of an evacuation. And many, many more of those kinds of things and I can tell you that your county staff every time in a calm manner rose to taking on those issues and coming up with sound and quick responses to them that did much for our communities.

We have some things in front of us. While we may be able to reduce our activation level from a three or highest down to a two in the next day or so, we'll probably have to remain at that level two activation as we get through a few things. One, we have to do a successful recovery. We have to put our communities back together. We have to clean up and we have to make sure that economically we're addressing any help that can be done by federal state and local agencies to help them.

We have to make sure we get all of the ash and everything else cleaned up so that people can return to a healthy environment. We have to make sure that the well-being of our communities is taken care of by making sure we're providing any resources that we can for, to make sure that they have comfort and care. And I know that a huge part of that is dependent on the leadership of all of you as well as the jurisdictions The entire community has been under tremendous stress.

And unfortunately we're faced now with the potential for debris flows and to a magnitude much greater than we had following the Whittier fire and the Sherpa fire. So today, we'll be convening a Debris Flow Contingency Planning meeting. It's a serious meeting where we will identify the hazards, begin that process, and then come up with our responses to those hazards.

While we want to make sure the community gets back to living their lives comfortably, we need to also prepare them for what could happen in the next two winters. We also have the continuing drought issue which has now been exasperated by water quality issues due to carbon influx into our reservoirs and so we began that process last week by convening an emergency meeting all the water purveyors on that coast The power outage issue, we now have a solid power outage plan to get us through the first 24 hours of a power outage. And we need to continue to expand on that and work with Southern California Edison until our power supply is as resilient as every other power supply in the state.

I want to give you some good things to look at here. 28,000 people were safely evacuated. It' s incredible. I think at peak we had over 1600 pets that were in our shelters. Over 7,000 people contacted our call center that was hastily put together in a matter of minutes by our incredible it staff and social services folks are certain volunteers and many others We tried a new technique on this incident where we activated one simple cell phone to receive text messages from people and that received over 174 texts.

People came from throughout the state, from Riverside, Los Angeles, Imperial County, San Diego County and other places I'm not stating but help from outside was very valuable and they brought good talent with them. We as far as I know the first time we, as an EOC took care of law enforcement and soldiers to make sure that their logistical needs were met. One ask I have of all of you that I hope you'll support me on is I need install Murphy beds in all my offices in my building.

And if you'll support me on that I'll be better for it in the future. We're going to keep pressing on, and we're going to do the best we can to get the recovery process underway and done right. And we're going to make sure we take the lessons learned from this incident and apply them to any future emergencies that we have anywhere in the county. Again thank you so much for all that you did and are doing and will continue to do in supporting us and your community.

And do any board members have questions or comments? Supervisor Williams

Well I think all of you will need a well-deserved rest, but I also want to make sure that we provide some urgency to the public on the sediment control which could be in our lap badly very quickly and maybe wondering if we can remind people especially Thank you Mr. Chair and members of the board. We are in a situation where we're close to the burn scar and in the most steep slopes not only the urgency of doing this to protect themselves but to protect our public roadways when a hillside The liability is with the person who owned the hillside. And so we should be getting that message out, so that people are not waiting for us to take care of all the problems but those who have the resources and own a large degree In place right now, because our whole community could suffer if that is not done.

CEO Miyasato? I

just want to make sure Terry Nessage can give you some information about a community meeting we're having on Friday.

As we' re now moving to the recovery phase of the thomas fire I' m pleased to announce that we' re organizing a local recovery assistance meeting to immediately begin our residents and businesses in rebuilding their lives. The meeting or drop-in center is really a drop-in of a number of different resources will be held tomorrow Friday December 22 from 10 a.m. To 2 p.m..

And that is located at 111 Valesito Road in Carpinteria. And I want to just give you a sampling of some of the agencies that will be there. We will have many of our county departments, Sheriff, Fire, Clerk Recorder Assessor, Public Health, Mental Health. A number of the different departments that have been involved in the response to continue to provide information and outreach. And from the state and federal agencies, we will have the State Contractors License Board, the State Department of Insurance, GO Business which will be reaching out to a number of the small businesses that have been impacted as a result of this event.

The Postal Service. Various insurance agents from throughout the community that know that they have people that have been impacted, they will be on site and able to provide assistance. Southern California Edison, California Office of Emergency Services, a host of others we're still working to confirm. So again tomorrow Friday December 22nd 10 AM to 2 PM Carpinteria Community Church and we'll be getting quite a bit of information out on this throughout the day thank you

Any more comments? I just wanted to say that I watched our county personnel and others on KUYT every afternoon at the San Marcos High School, and I did this in different forums. And just across the board people were commenting about how professional and how extraordinary the people representing the county were. So I'd just like to thank you all. This seemed to drag on and on, and it seemed so surreal. Empty streets, ash, people in masks, and it wears on people. And yet there was a sense of calm, there was a sense of can do we're going to handle this.

And everybody working together, and so that instilled a sense of confidence throughout the county. And people commented to me about that. So thank you everyone who was involved in that and I know it's going to be a long hard recovery. I had the opportunity on Tuesday to be in Washington DC and Spoke with both Senator Harris and Senator Feinstein, as well as Congressman Carvajal. And told them what a good job we're doing but how this is likely to be the largest fire in California history and what the impacts are in terms of the financial impacts of dealing with fighting and recovering from this fire, as well as the watershed impacts.

I'm happy to say that the emergency alert system in Washington, there's already a commitment and efforts in place to improve that system. So we learned and we carried the message back and I think we'll continue to communicate about these issues but we met very positive response our legislators wanting to help us out and move to make that happen. Supervisor Wolf?

Thank you Madam Chair and thank you for being in DC and talking to our representatives. It is quite remarkable what this community has gone through, the fact that we haven't I haven' t had any loss of life from our community members. Unfortunately that wasn' t the case with our cal fire firefighter and someone in ventura county which is in and of itself both tragic but hearing a number of people who evacuated from this community it' s astounding I am just continually amazed hearing Chief Peterson and Mr. Lewin talk about the cooperation between agencies. It's just always so impressive, and then the people behind the scenes that we often don't Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have a lot of things we don't see and talk about but this community I think Mr.

Lewin talked about Santa Barbara strong or Santa Barbara can take anything just throw it at us. We are a pretty tough community. We have a view of ourselves as being kind of laid back but the fact of the matter is that we're on top I'm very proud to be a part of this community. I think we still, as has been mentioned, we have challenges in front of us and so we really can't, as much as we would like to let down our guard. We have to continually be alert to our weather patterns, our community, what's around us Thank you. Mr. Chair and members of the board I want to start by saying thank you so much for all that you do for our community and our neighbors. Just a couple things that really touched me listening to Dr. Dean at one of the community meetings, one of the things she talked about was people cell phones go down or we don' Go next door, go talk to your neighbors.

Do outreach in your own community on your own street and I think a lot of people were doing that. There is this sense of community that we are all in this together and again, I can go on and on and just keep repeating myself. I'm very appreciative. Just another thing, I went out to the Equine Center at Earl Warren Showgrounds. Never seen anything quite like that before.

The Red Cross evacuation centers. I know I'm probably saying what all of us have done because I know just looking on Facebook every board member has been doing a lot of different things and trying to get out and talk to people but The fact is too, is that you folks are giving us a lot of information and you're keeping track of a lot of what's going on. And just finally I want to say a big shout out and thank you to my own staff.

Two of my staff were in the EOC in the call center. One Hilda is bilingual and she was an asset, I believe, in the EOC in talking to a lot of people. Thank you Madam Chair.

And seeing no more lights, Supervisor Adam I'm just checking in. I should have announced that you're participating remotely and I don't have a light here so I need to ask if there's anything you'd like to add at this

point? I'm not gonna go on and on about it but I'm really impressed. I watched some of the briefings on TV too and we got a top notch team I'm very proud of them.

Okay, well I think prospects may look pretty good for those Murphy beds. At least from... Okay, well I think that concludes the CEO's report. Let me just ask if there are any public comments for matters not on today's agenda? Mr. Allen do we have any speaker slips?

No requests.

So then turning to our special item today would you read that into the record please?

Chair Hartman and members of the board Our item today comes to the board from the Public Health Department. It's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding the ratification of declaration of a local health emergency related to the Thomas Fire.

And Dr. De Reynoso, will you be introducing your team? Thank you.

Good afternoon thank you for quickly convening to consider ratifying our local public health emergency declaration around the removal of household hazardous materials related to the Thomas fire. Before I start, I want We resubmitted the resolution. We caught several places where the wrong dates were listed, so the corrected version has been submitted to the clerk. As of this morning we know that there are 87 affected structures in our county that needs inspection and mitigation plan for Household Hazardous Materials. With me today is Dr. Dean who will talk about the health order as well as Mr. Paul McCaw, our supervising hazmat specialist who can answer questions about the implementation of the order if needed. Thank you.

Excuse me Madam Chair?

Yes

Supervisor

Adam.

Director Del Reynoso, are you able to tell me that the substantive text of the declaration has not been changed? You're just changing the dates at the end.

correct the resolution on the third paragraph has January 20th and it should have been December 20th. As well as on page 3, the last sentence it should read on this blank date of December instead of January so only the dates have been changed in the original resolution

We have the corrected version for execution by the

chair.

Was that all Supervisor Adam?

Yes, I guess that will do thank you.

And obviously it's a timing issue and these things are going to change all the time. But as of right now, as we know, it says here that there is areas that have been closed to reentry by residents and the public for safety reasons. And I understand you wrote that before this morning's. Does it make any difference to Mr. Gazzone that we signed something that we know is incorrect?

are we approved something?

Chair Hartman and Supervisors, so in the whereas that Supervisor Wolf is addressing it reads whereas areas that have been closed will be open in the near future also. So the board could properly act on this resolution as written.

As written?

Yes.

Okay thank you

Madam Chair, members of the board. I want to just speak briefly to the actual health officer order. It is very narrow and specific. The first point talks about No removal of fire debris without a hazardous materials inspection being conducted first, either by the county or the EPA or the Department of Toxic Substance Control. And the purpose of that is to make sure that hazardous materials are not ending up spread into places they shouldn't be, or into watersheds, or inappropriately disposed of.

The second part is very specific to the bins that are going to be used for the cleanup, so that our Environmental Health Division will authorize those and know how many have been distributed and where they are. The third portion is folks' ability to opt out of the debris cleanup program if they so choose, and that this applies to incorporated and unincorporated areas of the county.

And I'm happy to speak to the other reasons for the order if you'd like but it's very specific and that's the summary.

Are there any questions? Supervisor

Wolf. Thank you Madam Chair, so on page 2 the third full whereas it says that it's a voluntary fire debris clearance program But is that accurate? It sounds like, and then the next one it says property owners that do not participate must conduct their private debris removal transport. It doesn't say that they have to get approval. So if you can just clarify those two.

Sure. Madam Chair, members of the board there's really two parts to this and Paul is here and can speak to this more but the hazardous inspection is mandatory to ensure the public's health and safety. The debris removal program is voluntary and folks can opt out. Do you want to say anything more?

Madam Chair, members of the board. Paul McCaw, Supervising Hazardous Materials Specialist with Environmental Health. That is correct. The initial inspections by county HAZMAT staff will involve identification and segregation of household hazardous waste only. Those materials will be then subsequently picked up and properly transported and disposed per state and federal hazardous waste law.

That aspect does not involve the overall property cleanup of fire debris. It is that aspect of the clean up, the fire debris and overall ash cleanup that is voluntary for them to enroll either with us or with the state.

Supervisor Wolk? So I'm just going to play this out. If my house has burnt down, someone has to come out from the county hazmat team to inspect and do any removal? Or is that correct?

That's correct.

And do we have enough staff available to do that? I mean, what is the turnaround time? What are we telling people?

We're still in the planning phase with that. We're putting together resources. I'm hoping with county staff to have a team or three teams of two inspectors to begin inspections following January 1st.

After January 1st?

That's correct.

And what if someone hasn't lost their house but they have sustained fire damage

Mr. Chair if the structures have been damaged we will be requiring an inspection for household hazardous waste because partial destruction of structures may well result in generation of a hazardous waste from the typical household hazardous waste such as paints, fertilizers, pesticides and items like that.

So can they move back into their house? Let'

I think I would defer to Dr. Dean on that.

Madam Chair, Supervisor Wolf. So this morning I went up to see some of these properties, some of the ones that were more extensively damaged and saw the amount of potential hazardous waste and what it's going to take to separate out the hazardous waste from just the regular debris. One part of the order specifically says that this does not include the removal of personal property from residential sites So folks can still take their personal items that they need. Your specific question of, can they move back into their house if let's say the garage has been damaged?

That would be a judgment call. My personal opinion having seen some of these properties is if the people feel safe to live there if a very specific part of the property was destroyed but not their actual residence and they choose to live there. The way this health officer order would apply is very specific to the hazardous household waste. So let's say the garage or a shed on the other side of their property was burned, but they want to live in their home and there are household hazardous waste, they would need an inspection I believe it would be separate because this health officer order is very specific to the household hazardous

Okay, if I could. So Mr. Lewin, I'm going to just ask you this question because it's To what extent are we getting this information out to the public via the EOC? And let me just go back to Dr. Dean, do we as a board have a copy of that order? The actual order because I only see the resolution or is that the order? They look very

similar. The actual order starts the title is the declaration of a local health emergency with the whereas statements.

Okay I gotcha. All right so

Mr. Lewin? Madam Chair and Supervisors, yesterday after the order was signed the information was already put out in the media And we will continue to do outreach on that. We certainly can target the homeowners through our wear and prepare learning system specifically, but I think the best thing that we've done is we have our folks out in the field right now from behavioral health and those people are bringing with them documents not this specific document but documents on the hazards of debris The other thing that I guess I want to assure you just in general about the county is we have a call center and when people call even with things like, I just needed to get into my house during a to get my medication evacuated. There are deputies from all the agencies even outside taking them home watering lawn.

I mean they're doing everything we can and Supervisor Adam, did you have anything you wanted to add?

Yeah, actually I do. I was just waiting for Supervisor Wolf to get done. I read last night the board letter and it was really concerning to me and of course last night was the—I've got to make a confession here—last night was the season finale of Survivor so I had to watch that and I didn't do a very thorough job reading this stuff until this morning I got kind of excited when I read the board letter because what it says is that in the summary text, it says that we're going to go out and access people's property without their permission and remove stuff. And then when I talked to Mr. Gazzone this morning and I just found that these two documents are just, this second document is misrepresented in the board letter. And I feel like we should go back and repair that because if somebody has the reaction that I had when I read that thing And I would say that it's the most accessible document.

It's the easiest thing to look up and read the board letter, and to find out what's going to happen. And especially the summary text, and then it's repeated later in the last paragraph on page two is such a gross misrepresentation I think we should go back and

Thank you, Chair Hartman and Supervisors. So the board over the next couple of weeks is having a meeting today to consider ratification of the local health emergency declaration and is scheduled to come back to accomplish that within 14 days again. And one option today would be for Thank you Madam Chair and members of the public. I'm here to ratify the local health emergency and perhaps in the minutes of the action make clear that As spelled out in numbered paragraph one that no removal of fire debris can occur without hazardous materials inspection. And then the clarification that Supervisor Adam has discussed could go into the next board agenda letter that we'll work with public health on. That would be my recommendation in order to affect this today.

So within the local health emergency, the second page towards the bottom beginning with further it is hereby ordered. Those two numbered paragraphs on that page and the two numbered paragraphs on the top of the third page are actually the four points of the local health emergency order.

Supervisor Adam?

Yeah I don't have any problem with that at all. My problem comes from the inaccuracy of the summary text, particularly. But then later down the line in the last paragraph it's repeated in the board letter and I think we really need to clean that up and if it takes two weeks that's unfortunate because The people that are going to be you know nobody in the 4th district is going to be affected by this and so you know in a way it's okay with us but the people my thought is the people that are likely to be reading this thing to find out what they need to do and what we just adopted that may affect them are going to run into the most accessible document Pretty large mischaracterization of the actual.

the intent and effect of the document that we're actually adopting here. So, with that all being said I'm fine with it. We can go ahead and adopt it now and try to fix it later but to the extent that people are looking at this for information, I think we should probably step on the gas a little bit.

Madam Chair and Supervisors, first of all thank you for those comments. We clearly need to do a very good job of posting exactly what all this means and as soon as I get back to the EEOC I will meet with the JIC folks and we will develop in a simple fashion exactly what this means as far as what homeowners that have had damage or loss can do And we'll make sure that that is posted directly on our website. We'll put out a social media releases to tell people what to do and tomorrow at our local assistance center, will also provide that data but we will have a one page sheet that will say clearly how it works, what they're responsible to do and who's paying for what?

And I guess Supervisor Adams comments raised the question of who and under what circumstances will people be going on to private property damaged during the fire without their permission?

So first of all, nobody that owns property is going to be prohibited from going on their property. We believe we've done a good job of telling them that there's hazards on their property. The issue is now the concern of getting rid of that hazardous material so it does not contaminate their neighbor's property, waterways and the people that are there. So in order to do that, our environmental health folks, CUPA folks will go to those sites and do an inspection. This will happen as quick as they can.

They're already calling back their staff. They will then let the property owner know that there is or is not an issue. If there is, they will advise them that the county will be able to clean that up at no cost to the homeowner. And then if the homeowner decides to opt out and they wanted, they can voluntarily take care of it themselves. They can do that. The issue is to make this easy for the homeowners and make it easy and move it quite fast. And by doing, by the county taking this on, it should move quickly.

And again, I'm still just trying to get clarification on what I think Supervisor Adams' point is. Who will be entering onto someone else's private property without their permission?

By this order the county inspectors can go and do it. I can tell you the intention is not for anyone to go onto anyone's property without permission. That is just if necessary. We will take an approachable hand of this

Okay Mr. Gazzone.

Chair Hartman I generally agree with comments by Mr. Lewin again focus that the actual local health emergency declaration by the local health officer is very narrow and prohibits the movement of fire debris off the property without it having a hazardous waste inspection everything else after that would really be part of the implementation that Environmental Health Services puts together as their rollout of how they will do these inspections and removal

Supervisor Wolf. I just want to restate my concern that we might not have enough people to do these inspections, so if you could please assure me that we have folks available if we are called for public health to go out and do an inspection, that we have people available to do that.

Madam Chair, members of the board. As I indicated we already have lined up staff for three teams of two. We feel it's important to have teams of two for safety purposes and we believe that with that crew we can get through the inspections and process within one to two weeks. If need be during the planning phase Request additional staff so that we can gear up and have more inspection teams to expedite the process.

But we do have staff on board, they will need to be specifically trained in the inspection objectives and protocols. and as well as in health and safety aspects of the work they'll be doing. We also need to procure some specific pieces of equipment, which we'll be working with EOC to do those being a radiation monitor as well as mercury meters.

So you have the teams ready but are they trained? And do you have the supplies and equipment?

We are working to get the supplies and equipment as we speak, and we'll be submitting resource requests to the EOC either later today or tomorrow.

So Ms. Miyasato I understand why we're doing this but It sounds like there's a little bit of a delay in going out to these properties and then there will be another two-week turnaround before approval is given to the property owner. So it just raises an issue for me about If it, for property owners wanting to move forward and get things done that we don't as a county delay the process. That we move forward as quickly as possible to help these folks.

Supervisor Wolf to the Chair, we are moving as quickly as possible. Today was the first day where we repopulated these areas as you recall. We can also look to other counties to provide mutual aid. Again, this is all going through the EOC. I think we also want to get people's information and help as soon as we can. Also our survey of what properties were destroyed looks like it's manageable. Again, we'll look at the damaged properties as well but we hear you loud and clear and we are trying as fast as we can with the holidays even pulling other staff from other jurisdictions may be difficult.

Supervisor Williams, thanks for your patience.

So just so that I try to simplify this again, because there's been a lot of discussion. I think the key element of the resolution is in the second-to-last page. Further it is hereby ordered that no removal of fire debris from the Thomas Fire and concurrent fires in Santa Barbara County shall occur from properties without a hazardous materials inspection conducted either by the county of Santa Barbara, the US EPA or the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Is that really the meat of this? In most cases, that's going to be us doing that inspection. And of course the reason is because not only do people unfortunately routinely store a lot of very dangerous stuff in their homes now that this may be burned or I think it's important that we do this. Obviously it was not ideal for you guys to do this quickly but you have to have a hearing and you have to do this quickly because people are going back up there as I also want to give credit that Dr. Deane is doing this on her birthday so I'm sure this wasn't ideal for a number of circumstances but to me I understand the urgency of it and support the resolution.

Mr. Ghisoni, did you have something you wanted to add?

No I think Dr. Donarino and team was agreeing.

If I may mention so our process we are we've started the process of pulling together forms checklists for the teams to use when they go out. So my understanding is that we will strive to go in it and begin our inspection our initial screening identifying the hazardous materials to be removed, segregating them and then we will be working with either our subcontractors and the state for the removal. But after each initial inspection if it if the property can be cleared we will post that clearance immediately.

Paul do you have anything else to add to that?

Okay, seeing no more lights up here and-

I do have one more clarification. Yeah, so we're not going to actually go on people's property and remove materials? Is that correct? There's nobody from the county that's actually going to access private property and remove materials?

Supervisor, Adam County staff will do the inspections. We'll segregate those materials. The removal of the household hazardous waste would be performed by either a county contractor or at I believe at the option of the homeowner, a contractor of their own.

Okay, so tell me about the mechanics of that. How does that happen? The homeowner calls you and asks for an inspection and then you go out there and go through all the ashes and debris and find all this stuff and actually place it into the bins and then they get hauled away to an approved landfill?

The details of where we would place it are still being worked out, but we would again segregate the household hazardous waste that needed to be disposed. And then that would be subsequently picked up by either a county contractor or a contractor hired by the landowner at their option.

Okay and so physically we're gonna go through all of their stuff with their permission?

Madam Chair, Supervisor Adam. The Health Officer Order, the declaration invoking the authority of the health officer. has the ability to waive the required right of entry in this state of a threat to the public's health, not for debris cleanup. So what I understand from the partners at the state is that if it was necessary to protect the public's health that staff could go on that property to address the hazardous materials but that verbiage is not in the Health Officer order. I'm looking at Mike Gazzone to correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you Dr. Dean, Chair Hartman and supervisors. Again focusing on the order itself it's very narrow and prohibits the flow of fire debris from the property without a hazardous waste inspection. Separate from that there is an authority for the county to access the property without what is termed a quote right-of-entry and that's basically an insurance document among other things As a practical matter, having gone through this in 2008 and 2009 I would expect that most homeowners would welcome the assistance of the county.

And if they do not welcome the assistance of the county then the process that's being developed by EHS would then go down one of two roads either as time goes by perhaps giving them an order to abate the hazard on the property which is an expensive process for the homeowner or actually gaining access to the property at that point We went through this twice, 2008-2009. I think we had very few parcels that even initially objected to the presence of at that point the state team gaining access to the property and worked through those but those will all be some of the details in EHS's implementation of this fairly narrow health officer order.

Well, I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about the mechanics of what happens. Run me through the mechanics. The homeowner calls and then we go out to the site and we look around and then they physically lift the things that we find and put it in a bin or do we provide the labor that physically lifts this stuff and puts it in a bin? This is a mechanical question. It's not a legal question.

Madam Chair, Supervisor Adam, my understanding is that we would be the individuals who would identify, move any household hazardous waste into a selected area for stockpiling for later pickup. This would be a hand-picking operation. We're not looking at I hope that answers your question. That is correct. The actual identification and relocation on the property, and then a contractor would pick up and transport for proper disposal any of the waste we identify.

Okay thank you so much.