San Andreas, CA…The 2022-2023 Calaveras County Civil Grand Jury has released a report entitled “Calaveras County Fire and Environment: Every Day is Earth Day”.  The Summary section of the report states why the grand jury undertook the investigation and notes the report’s most significant issues, findings, and recommendations, as follows:

“In our effort to identify areas of operational improvement for Calaveras County, the Grand Jury researched issues related to the Calaveras County Environmental Management Agency (EMA), the Calaveras County Office of Emergency Services (OES), the Calaveras County Air Pollution Control District (APCD), and the Fire Agencies within the County. Due to recent events related to wildfires, climate change, waterway pollution, and cannabis agriculture, the Calaveras County Grand Jury (CCGJ) chose to focus our efforts on these agencies. In order to help reduce the risk of wildfires and improve public safety the Grand Jury has identified several areas to improve. Our main area of focus is to increase public safety. This would be accomplished by improving the use of alert systems, identifying opportunities for more effective land use options, and increasing the effectiveness of fire control and prevention measures.

With the limited staff and resources available to the EMA, they are only able to track and monitor individual infractions involving environmental hazards. However, from a systems standpoint, tracking, compiling, and analyzing countywide data from multiple agencies is impractical due to the lack of data for strategic planning purposes.”

Please inform your readers about the grand jury’s new report, including in your article the grand jury’s website http://grandjury.calaverasgov.us/. The following link may also be used to view the report –  Every Day is Earth Day.