Firefighters battling a pair of wildfires in the San Gabriel Mountains have been instructed to avoid a 1,000-foot radius area around a nest where a baby eagle is getting ready to fledge, a U.S. Forest Service official said Wednesday.

The bald eagle’s nest is not located in part of the forest where the Reservoir and Fish fires are burning. The buffer zone above and around the nest is intended for water-dumping helicopters, which create noise and air turbulence that could disturb the chick, said Ann Berkley, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service.

California has been diligently trying to reduce use of fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 350, which requires 50 percent of the electricity from utilities to come from renewable sources by 2030.

But it’s not just energy utilities that can add more renewables to their portfolios – water suppliers can, as well, although they aren’t mandated to do so. It takes a lot of energy to pump, treat and deliver drinking water, and to treat and dispose of wastewater. Some water travels hundreds of miles from source to tap.

Thousands of Southern California residents were left without power Tuesday as a brutal heat wave continued to bake the region, utility company officials said.

Some 5,500 customers — including residences and businesses — scattered across Los Angeles were affected as of 2 p.m. Most would probably have power restored by the evening, Department of Water and Power officials said. Though the cause of the outages are being investigated, the heat wave that has sent temperatures skyrocketing into the triple digits and put record demand on the power grid — including because of increased use of air conditioners — was certainly a factor, said DWP spokeswoman Vonda Paige.

Farms and golf courses rank among the biggest water users in the Coachella Valley, but detailed information about how much water each of those businesses use is kept secret by the area’s largest water agency.

That would change under a bill now before the California Legislature. The bill would clarify previous legislation by specifying that while residential customers’ data may be kept confidential, the public is entitled to information about how much water and energy is used by businesses and institutions.

Two sprawling wildfires tore through at least 4,500 acres in the San Gabriel Mountains on Monday, and only a canyon prevented the blazes from merging into one massive inferno, fire officials said.

The two brush fires broke out in Azusa and Duarte amid a blistering heat wave, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of homes and at least 750 residents. The first blaze, called the Reservoir fire, was reported about 11 a.m. at Highway 39 in the San Gabriel Mountains, said Andrew Mitchell, spokesman for the Angeles National Forest.