County Awarded Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Funds

Sonoma County was recently awarded $586,739 in Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to support projects that mitigate seismic and wildfire hazards throughout the County. The awards come after an extensive application and review period that followed the Sonoma Complex Fires. 

“After the 2017 Fires, we immediately started identifying available grants to help our community recover,” said Board of Supervisors Chair David Rabbitt. “The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds will increase public safety in Sonoma County.”

The California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES) administers these federal funds which require a total of $195,580 in local match funding. The first HMGP award of $249,998 will fund an update to the existing Sonoma County Local Hazard Mitigation Plan. Planning efforts will involve other jurisdictions and improve analysis of local wildfire, landslide, flood, geologic, and climate change related hazard risks. Creating a multi-jurisdiction plan will enable a comprehensive approach to risk reduction, and avoid duplication of efforts.

The second award of $150,000 will fund critical updates to the current Sonoma County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) and become part of the County General Plan Safety Element. The revised CWPP will reflect a collaboration between the Sonoma County Fire Preparedness Division and Fire Safe Sonoma, Inc., and will focus on hardening structures and creating defensible space to reduce risk of fire damage in identified vulnerable locations in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) throughout the County. 

The third award of $181,741 will fund the purchase and installation of a generator at Sonoma County’s Transportation and Public Works (TPW) Santa Rosa Road Yard to reduce interruption to critical services. The Santa Rosa Yard serves as TPW’s department operations center (DOC) during emergencies and disasters. 

Two additional HMGP grants were previously awarded in 2018 and early 2019 to the Sonoma County Water Agency, including $2,306,867 for the Ely Booster Station Structural Retrofit and $2,238,402 for a Russian River County Sanitation District Secondary Treatment Clarifiers Seismic Rehabilitation and Retrofit project. 

Sonoma County will announce additional awards as they are received. For information about additional grant applications and other recovery updates, visit Sonoma County Office of Recovery & Resiliency.