Santa Barbara County plans to create hubs in North County to serve as safe refuges in case of climate-related emergencies with the help of a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) grant.
“Essentially they call it a feasibility grant, it’s everything except for actually building [community resilience hubs]. It’s the outreach, development of a tool kit, and then site assessment at the building to determine upgrades. It will assess the capability of adding solar and storage. It’s like getting plans from the architect, and you have to find the contractor and someone to pay for it,” Santa Barbara County Sustainability Division Chief Ashley Walkins said.
Through the feasibility process, the sustainability division and its partners will identify community needs the hub will provide like electricity, shelter, water and food, and charging stations. The team will also look for hub locations—which are typically trusted or familiar spots like community centers, she explained.
“The concept of resilience hubs surfaced when we were working with the Community Environmental Council to put on a series of climate resilience roundtables to get information from the community about what their needs were,” Walkins said. “Hubs emerged as a key idea that came out of those roundtables, and [we began] looking for opportunities to get funding for resilience hubs when we came across the PG&E application. It was very timely.”
The $400,000, year-long grant project kicked off on Jan. 1, but Walkins said preparations began before the county received the grant. The county formed a partnership with MICOP (Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project) to submit the grant application, and will continue this collaboration and work with North County cities and the Santa Barbara County Regional Climate Collaborative to better understand community challenges, Walkins said.
This was MICOP’s first time collaborating with Santa Barbara County for a project, said MICOP Associate Director Genevieve Flores-Haro.
“On behalf of MICOP, we are thrilled the grant was awarded, and to be a part of the planning work so we can support our Indigenous and Mixteco-speaking community members as it relates to the Santa Maria and Guadalupe residents. We’re excited to bring our voice and perspective to this project,” Flores-Haro said.
As different crises have hit the county like wildfires, debris flow, and the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s important to prioritize front-line communities—like immigrants and Mixteco-speaking residents—in order to properly respond to any future events, Flores-Haro said.
“We’re so excited to see what’s to come from this collaboration. When it’s time for implementation, we hope we are partners in the implementation as well,” she added.
The sustainability division will host meetings, focus groups, and visioning sessions to create a list of potential hub locations. From there, the team would take the list and cross-check them with community needs and desired features, Walkins added.
“I think it’s really important that rather than deciding what the community wants, we hear from them directly that it’s the best product,” she said. “Ultimately our hope would be hubs throughout the county. We are focused on PG&E territory, which is North County, and then networking to build it into South County.”
No public meetings have been scheduled yet, but Walkins invites residents to email their input to awatkins@countyofsb.org.
This article appears in Jan 6-13, 2022.
