80503.
For purposes of this division, the following definitions apply:(a) “Air board” means the State Air Resources Board.
(b) “Climate resilience” means the ability of an entity or system, including an individual, a community, an ecosystem, or a natural system, and its component parts, to absorb, accommodate, or recover from the effects of a climate event in a timely and efficient manner, including through ensuring the preservation, restoration, or improvement of its essential basic structures and functions. In the case of natural and working lands, climate resilience includes the preservation, restoration, or enhancement of the ability to sequester carbon.
(c) “Committee” means the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparation, Flood Protection, Extreme Heat Mitigation, and Workforce Development Bond Finance Committee created pursuant to Section 80602.
(d) “Critical community infrastructure” means infrastructure that is necessary to providing vital community and individual functions, including, but not limited to, drinking and wastewater infrastructure, emergency shelters, communication and warning systems, evacuation routes, emergency power and public medical facilities, schools, town halls, hospitals, health clinics, community centers, community nonprofit facilities providing essential services, libraries, homeless shelters, senior and youth centers, childcare facilities, food banks, grocery stores, and parks and recreation sites.
(e) “Disadvantaged community” means a community with a median household income that is less than 80 percent of the statewide average.
(f) “Economically distressed area” means a municipality with a population of 20,000 persons or less, a rural county, or a reasonably isolated and divisible segment of a larger municipality where the segment of the population is 20,000 persons or less, with an annual median household income that is less than 85 percent of the statewide median household income and with one or more of the following conditions as determined by an agency administering funding under this division:
(1) Financial hardship.
(2) Unemployment rate at least 2 percent higher than the statewide average.
(3) Low population density.
(g) “Fund” means the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparation, Flood Protection, Extreme Heat Mitigation, and Workforce Development Fund created pursuant to Section 80518.
(h) “Groundwater sustainability agency” has the same meaning as defined in Section 10721 of the Water Code.
(i) “Interpretation” includes, but is not limited to, a visitor-serving amenity that enhances the ability to understand and appreciate the significance and value of natural, historical, and cultural resources and that may use educational materials in multiple languages, digital information in multiple languages, and the expertise of a naturalist or other skilled specialist.
(j) “Local agency” means a city, county, city and county, special district, joint powers authority, resource conservation district, or other political subdivision of the state.
(k) “Natural infrastructure” means a network of ecological areas, man-made systems, or practices that use or mimic natural processes to benefit people or wildlife. “Natural infrastructure” reduces vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and includes, but is not limited to, permeable pavements, bioswales, wetlands, floodplains, forests, urban forests, beaches, dunes, tidal marshes, reefs, seagrass, parks, rain gardens, and engineered systems, such as levees, that are combined with restored natural systems, to provide a wide array of benefits to people or wildlife.
(l) “Nonprofit organization” means a nonprofit corporation qualified to do business in California and qualified under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
(m) “Preservation” means rehabilitation, stabilization, restoration, conservation, development, and reconstruction, or any combination of those activities.
(n) “Protection” means those actions necessary to prevent harm or damage to persons, property, or natural, cultural, and historic resources, actions to improve access to public open-space areas, or actions to allow the continued use and enjoyment of property or natural, cultural, and historic resources. Protection includes site monitoring, acquisition, development, restoration, preservation, and interpretation.
(o) (1) “Restoration” means the improvement of physical structures or facilities and, in the case of natural systems and landscape features, includes, but is not limited to, any of the following:
(A) The control of erosion.
(B) Stormwater capture, treatment, reuse, and storage, or to otherwise reduce stormwater pollution.
(C) The control and elimination of invasive species and harmful algal blooms.
(D) The planting of native species.
(E) The removal of waste and debris.
(F) Prescribed burning and other fuel hazard reduction measures.
(G) Fencing out threats to existing or restored natural resources.
(H) Improving instream, riparian, floodplain, or wetland habitat conditions.
(I) Other plant and wildlife habitat improvement to increase the natural system value of the property, or coastal or ocean resources.
(J) Activities described in subdivision (b) of Section 79737 of the Water Code.
(2) “Restoration” also includes activities, such as the planning, permitting, monitoring, and reporting that are necessary to ensure successful implementation of the restoration objectives.
(p) “Severely disadvantaged community” means a community with a median household income that is less than 60 percent of the statewide average.
(q) “Small- and medium-sized farms” means farms and ranches of 500 acres or less.
(r) “Socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers” has the same meaning as defined in Section 512 of the Food and Agricultural Code.
(s) “Structure hardening” means the installation, replacement, or retrofitting of building materials, systems, or assemblies used in the exterior design and construction of existing nonconforming structures with features that are in compliance with Chapter 7A (commencing with Section 701A.1) of Part 2 of Title 24 of the California Code of Regulations, or any appropriate successor regulatory code with the primary purpose of reducing risk to structures from wildfire or conforming to the low-cost retrofit list, and updates to that list, developed pursuant to paragraph (1) of subdivision (c) of Section 51189 of the Government Code.
(t) “Tribe” means a federally recognized Native American tribe or a California Native American tribe that appears on the California Tribal Consultation List maintained by the Native American Heritage Commission.
(u) “Under-resourced community” means either of the following:
(1) A community identified as a disadvantaged community pursuant to Section 39711 of the Health and Safety Code.
(2) A low-income community as defined in Section 39713 of the Health and Safety Code.
(v) “Vulnerable population” means a subgroup of a population within a region or community that faces a disproportionately heightened risk or increased sensitivity to impacts of climate change and that lacks adequate resources to cope with, adapt to, or recover from such impacts.
(w) “Water board” means the State Water Resources Control Board.
(x) “Wildfire buffer” means greenspaces or open spaces that are managed to reduce the spread of wildfires, and are located between structures and wildlands in a community to reduce structure vulnerability to wildfire risks. Wildfire buffers shall be designed to provide additional benefits that may include shelter from natural disasters, recreation, habitat, stormwater capture, and active transportation.