“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, its the only thing that ever has.”
— Margaret Mead
Watch PVNU’s Zoom Presentation to learn about our initiatives!
what’s New?
wildfire safety
The recent CZU and Glass fires show what happens when wildfire burns through towns like Portola Valley that have never previously burned.
Explosive growth and rapid fire expansion — nearly 40,000 acres burned in less than 12 hours — destroying hundreds or even thousands of homes in their wake.
What makes wildfire so dangerous is its highly contagious, rapid spread across hilly, vegetated terrain, and that is precisely why collective Town-wide action is required to address the causes of its contagious spread and reduce the extreme risk wildfire poses to us all.
No matter what individual homeowners do to protect their respective properties, we cannot prevent the spread of wildfire unless all of the surrounding properties do so as well.
That is what makes collective, Town-wide action so important
That is why PVNU has called upon the Town Council to adopt a new wildfire ordinance to mandate town-wide removal of dangerous ladder fuels and dead vegetation from all hazardous, fire-prone properties. PVNU’s Wildfire Safety Ordinance.
And that is why Fire Marshall, Don Bullard, recently told the Town and its fire safety committees:
“Now is the time to take what we can from these lessons learned and add to our arsenal of Town Fire Safety Ordinances to empower and enable the Fire District to reach even further into the removal of highly combustible ladder fuels, dense underbrush and dead vegetation from any and all properties that exist within the Very High and High Fire Hazard Zones within the Fire District.” Read Don Bullard’s September 10, 2020 letter here.
Why does the Town Council oppose this?
Why do members of the Town Council insist that wildfire prevention is an individual responsibility, and not also a collective responsibility of the Town?
Working together as a Town we can and should accomplish much, much more to make Portola Valley a safer community.
PVNU surveys residents on town priorities
PVNU is surveying Town residents to learn what issues you consider to be the highest priorities for our Town.
Two surveys, one conducted between August 17 and August 19, and the second between August 27 and 30, asked PV Forum subscribers to assign a priority ranking to each of six different issues:
affordable housing
open space and wildlife preservation
quality schools
racial opportunity and justice
policing and public safety, and
fire safety and emergency preparedness.
Respondents could assign the same priority ranking to any issue, resulting in some respondents assigning the same priority (e.g., 1st Priority) ranking to two or more issues.
A third survey, conducted between September 4 and 7, asked respondents to assign a different priority ranking to each issue, thus requiring each respondent to assign a different priority ranking to each of the six issues.
A total of 92 distinct respondents in Portola Valley completed one of the three surveys, and the results of those responses have been compiled and are presented on our PVNU Survey Results page.
Where is the wildfire risk assessment for the wedge?
In the fall of of 2019, the Fire Marshall told Stanford and the Town that the Wedge was a very dangerous place to build a housing project and asked the Town and Stanford to find a different location for the project.
In February 2020, after 300 residents surrounding Stanford’s project learned of the fire danger Stanford’s project would pose to their homes, they wrote Stanford demanding it withdraw the project.
At the same time, 60 residents wrote the Town Council asking it to prioritize fire safety over development by requiring Stanford to assess the wildfire risk its project would pose to surrounding homes, neighborhoods and infrastructure.
Eight months later Stanford has still failed to assess the wildfire risk its project would pose to more than 500 homes on the hilltops and ravines surrounding its project.
To be fair, Stanford has assessed whether the removal of some vegetation from its property would tend to reduce the intensity or spread of fire on its property under certain, favorable assumptions.
But Stanford’s reduction in vegetation — long overdue and much needed — does not begin to assess the wildfire risk its project will pose to the surrounding hilltops and homes, even if the property is completely denuded of combustible fuels.
As PVNU has explained to the Fire Marshall in a succession of letters this May and July, any reasonable assessment of the wildfire risk that Stanford’s project would pose requires careful, thorough examination of the timing, intensity and extent of wildfire spread to surrounding homes and infrastructure under the variety of extreme wind, temperature and drought conditions in which such fires actually occur. Read PVNU’s May 17, May 29 and July 24 letters to Fire Marshall Don Bullard here.
The wildfire risk that Stanford’s property can pose is only increased when developers, such as Stanford, seek to reduce their costs by reducing the separation between structures, building setbacks, road right-of-ways, off street parking and egress requirements our ordinances require for safe development on such perilous land in Portola Valley.
If we have learned anything from the recent spate of California wildfires, it is the extreme danger and catastrophic risk of building housing projects in steep ravines below hundreds of homes.
That is why the Fire Marshall warned Stanford and the Town against this project and asked them to place it somewhere else.
And that is why 300 residents wrote Stanford in February demanding it withdraw its proposal unless and until it assesses and alleviates the risk its project would create.
where did the hermit fault go?
Nearly 50 years ago, Portola Valley pioneered the application of sound geologic science to ensure safe land use and development. The Town publishes geologic maps showing the known and inferred locations of geologic faults and the areas of town that are subject to other geologic hazards, such as liquefaction, landslide and subsidence. If new evidence warrants, the Town’s maps can be amended following a noticed public hearing and approval by the Planning Commission based on sound evidence justifying the change.
For more than 40 years, the Town’s geologic and ground movement potential maps showed the trace of a geologic fault, called the Hermit fault, running southeast across Westridge Drive near its intersection with Alpine Road, across the Stanford Wedge property and into Los Trancos Creek.
The 2014 Housing element of the Town’s General Plan showed the same fault in the same location.
The 2020 Quaternary Fault and Fold Database of the United States Geological Survey similarly maps, with “good mapping certainty,” the Hermit fault running southeasterly across Westridge Drive, across Stanford’s Wedge property through its proposed housing project, and across Alpine Road into Los Trancos Creek.
USGS website (2020)
As documented in the October 2020 report of Michael Angell, the only structural geologist to study the Hermit fault in detail, the path of the fault as mapped in the USGS database represents the consensus view of the geologists who have investigated and mapped the Hermit fault since 1963. Read the complete October 4, 2020 Report of Michael Angell here.
Nonetheless, after representatives of the Town approached Stanford to develop a housing project on the Wedge, the Hermit fault disappeared from the Town’s geologic maps.
PV Ground Movement Potential Map
There is no record of any public hearing or decision by the Planning Commission to remove the fault from the Town’s geologic maps.
By removing the fault from the Town’s map, the Town and Stanford apparently believe there is no need or requirement for Stanford to investigate what seismic hazard the fault may produce, or to follow the Town ordinances requiring a 100 foot building setback from each side of a mapped fault’s inferred trace. In fact, Stanford’s website says it has completed it geological hazard investigation of the site with no mention of or acknowledgment of the Hermit fault. Yet, as Stanford’s own geologic consultant disclosed in an unsigned draft 2017 report, the proposed housing project would be situated directly across the likely path of the fault.
Merely removing the trace of a fault from a map does not remove the geologic fault. Nor does it remove the seismic hazard the fault can pose. Stanford should either conduct the appropriate geological field investigations to provide sound geologic evidence demonstrating there is no fault across its property, or it should revise and design its project to deal with the seismic and fire hazards the fault can present.