CSO Rita Kampalath on LA County Resilience Planning

Rita, when we last interviewed your predecessor, the County was just rolling out its first sustainability plan. Update and share what progress  LA County has made on achieving that Plan’s stated goals.

Thanks for that question. Amazingly, it’s been over five years since the plan was adopted. Since 2019, when it was adopted, we switched pretty quickly to looking at implementation and what we could do first. I’m proud to say that we’re at a point of revising the plan, which I’ll talk about later. But in doing that, we have evaluated progress over the past five years, and we’ve noted that out of the priority actions—at least the things that have been prioritized for implementation—over 80% of them have been achieved or are on track. More than half of the actions overall—whether prioritized or not—are either achieved or on track to be achieved.

That includes things like developing a just transition strategy, the adoption of an oil drilling phase-out ordinance, the adoption of the County’s first water plan, completing a climate vulnerability assessment, and establishing the Clean Power Alliance—which means that now County buildings and unincorporated communities have access to renewable energy, and County buildings in unincorporated areas, at least, are entirely on renewable energy. We’ve also invested millions of dollars in stormwater capture, advanced tenant protections, and issued the County’s first land acknowledgment. It’s a diverse array of accomplishments.

That said, part of what that speaks to is that it’s time for us to revisit these goals, set new milestones, and define new objectives for ourselves—and that is what we’re doing in this revision process.

Share with our readers the goals proving the most difficult to achieve.

Yeah, that’s a tough one and there are challenges across all of the goals. All of the goals are pretty cross-sectoral, and it’s really important to note that right after the plan was adopted in late 2019, just a few months later, we were dealing with the pandemic and related shutdowns. Our office shifted its focus to food equity, and that very specific specific role in the pandemic response took center stage over trying to push forward with other sustainability actions from the plan.

That said, I wouldn’t necessarily say that any one goal has been specifically difficult. It’s more a matter of: how do we properly resource them? Funding is very top of mind for me right now. We’re moving from a phase in the early years of the plan that focused more on policies and planning efforts to support implementation, to a phase where the rubber needs to hit the road. We either can put projects in the ground and implement programs—or we don’t–and that’s going to be the challenge going forward.

Let’s move to your thinking about updating the plan—what those priorities might be, and how they might differ from the original plan?

 My approach with this plan—I mean, I’ll point out that I’m an engineer. I like to implement things. I like to focus on getting things done. I appreciate the need for planning efforts, but we also want to be very targeted and specific about our goals around planning.

With this revision, my team and I have taken the approach that we’re not just going to rewrite the plan for the sake of rewriting it. We think it’s still a very strong plan. It was written with the long term in mind, and the goals remain relevant and appropriate. With this revision, we’re looking at the areas where we’ve accomplished actions, where our thinking has evolved regarding specific challenges, and places where we may need to extend the goalposts further. We’re taking a more targeted and nuanced approach rather than throwing everything out and starting from scratch.

That said, we have identified specific gaps in the plan. Some of those gaps reflect where our focus was back in 2019 versus where we see increased urgency now. resilience componenton a Climate Resilience Officer. 

That said, we have identified specific gaps in the plan. Some of those gaps reflect where our focus was back in 2019 versus where we see increased urgency now. One of the big additions we’re making is a climate resilience component. There’s going to be a lot of discussion around developing a comprehensive climate resilience strategy for the County, and we’ve brought on a Climate Resilience Officer. Some of this work stems from a Board directive to focus on community resilience, but beyond that, this also reflects a growing understanding of how much climate impacts—like extreme heat and wildfires—are affecting people’s day-to-day lives.

Address how understandable public demands for to expedite rebuild coexist with the policy imperative to “build back better.”

One important point for people to understand is the concept of “like-for-like” rebuilding, which has been a key element of streamlining the rebuilding process. The thing is, “like-for-like” largely refers to the footprint of a home, and it doesn’t necessarily mean people will be able to rebuild the exact same structure they had before. We’ve had multiple code updates since then, and residents will have to meet the updated codes. For good reason—those updates are not just for the sake of regulation. They’re about safety, fire resilience, and reflecting our best thinking on how to build structures that are safe and resilient to various hazards.

The homes that are rebuilt will be an improvement in terms of resilience compared to many of the structures that were unfortunately lost to the fires. That’s not to say that these updated codes alone will get us as far as we’d like.

One of the things my team is focusing on right now is making it as easy as possible for residents to rebuild with resilience, whether it’s a code requirement for them or not. We’re working on resource guides that outline key elements to include in home designs, identifying where funding resources may be available, and directing residents to support systems.

There has also been a huge outpouring of support—both from a technical assistance standpoint, with architects, engineers, and designers wanting to help, and from philanthropic organizations. Part of the challenge will be figuring out how to make best use of all of those efforts. 

Immediately confronting parts of LA County devastated by the Eaton & Palisades fires, is rebuilding infrastructure. How will the County’s Sustainably Plan impact the infrastructure rebuild? 

We have some interesting timing here, where we’re revising a plan right after these fires have happened, and I would expect that to be reflected in the new plan. The plan has always been a vision statement and a strategic framework. It lays out ideals and the need for more specifics on how and where we plan infrastructure. But it doesn’t give direct, detailed directives about infrastructure.

When it comes to these communities, I think there’s a need for a nuanced approach. There will be places where we want to rebuild infrastructure—especially the grid—differently. But that requires a detailed assessment. It’s not something I can make a blanket statement on. However, looking at strategies like undergrounding power lines where feasible, creating microgrids, or incorporating distributed solar and storage systems to allow for easier power shutoffs—these are all topics that are part of the discussion.

Before concluding, you mention the County’s Climate Resilience Officer—elaborate on why the county created that position and what the Officer’s responsibilities are.

The Climate Resilience Officer role reflects an increasing understanding of how climate hazards are impacting people now. We’ve seen a rise in extreme heat events, wildfires, and the cycle of drought followed by heavy precipitation, flooding, and mudslides. These were all identified in our climate vulnerability assessment.

That assessment laid the groundwork by identifying the hazards that would most strongly affect Los Angeles. Our Board saw these impacts in their communities every day—especially extreme heat, affecting a vast portion of the region. Of course, we need to continue  the long term work of reducing the emissions that cause climate change, but we also need to address the climate impacts that are already here. People are dying from extreme heat events and other climate-related disasters, and we need to act now to protect them.

As for the Climate Resilience Officer’s scope, the directive from the Board was to develop a comprehensive climate resilience strategy for the county.

We’ll be using the OurCounty revision process to develop that strategythrough our  community engagement process So, the CRO’s initial focus is really leading that aspect of the OurCounty plan revision. .

What lessons re Building Back Better has the County team learned from other jurisdictions —ie New Orleans, Maui, Paradise—and,  have those efforts shaped LA County’s current response?

 As soon as the fires happened, we received a lot of outreach—offers of support from various jurisdictions that have dealt with similar disasters.

We’ve been in touch with officials from Maui, Boulder, and places across the state. The state government has also provided resources and guidance. These discussions have covered the entire spectrum of fire recovery—not just resilience but also technical recovery efforts.

One specific example: Boulder has done a really good job with their recovery process, so we’ve been studying the technical resources they developed to see how we can create something similar here.

Does metropolitan Los Angeles, and California as a whole, have the governance structure needed to handle the major climate-related challenges we’re now facing? 

One thing that strikes me is that—and I preface this by saying that we have great partners in our county departments–including Regional Planning, Public Health, Public Works, and others, all working closely together on climate issues. So, I want to emphasize that there’s great collaboration between our departments, and a lot of folks who are very dedicated to this.

However, the fact that we need to create new working group structures when we’re trying to plan around climate resilience issues, for instance increased tree canopy, or heat resilience, probably speaks to the fact that existing structures aren’t quite suited for addressing issuesrelated to climate resilience.

The problems we’re now facing are evolving, and previous government structures simply couldn’t have anticipated the complexity of some of these challenges like drought followed by flood, continually increasing heat, and how to design infrastructure that addresses multiple issues at once. We need to think more critically about how we structure our response to climate challenges While acknowledging that these entities still have existing responsibilities they need to manage.

I’d probably need a whole conference to get into it.

Lastly, elaborate on the sense of urgency driving action in LA County.

I think, more than anything else, what’s top of mind is this deep sense of urgency in implementing projects. You know, we’ve done a lot of planning work, and as a region, we’re oriented towards innovation. We know that many of the things we need to do right now to improve climate resilience are already clear. It’s really about leaning into them and finding the resources to get them done–that’s been my focus. We need to have regional conversations about how we resource these efforts because what we’re doing right now—looking for grants and trying to repurpose existing funding measures—isn’t going to be enough. Like you touched on with the governance structure question, a lot of our funding and resources are currently targeted to very specific problems. As long as we try to mold these existing structures and resources to fit the problems we’ll face in the future, we’re going to miss the mark.

That’s a key issue for us as a region moving forward. One thing the wildfires highlighted for me—though this isn’t new—is that the impacts of these events, even on individual neighborhoods or communities, are things we need to address regionally.While there are obviously communities that have been hardest hit by these disasters, there are also  ripple effects across the region—air quality issues, water quality concerns, rising rents, labor and material shortages. These problems will reverberate throughout the region and we need to understand that making public investments to address them is also  good for the entire region.