Vegetation management projects made possible by Coastal Conservancy grants
The City of Healdsburg was recently awarded a total of $919,000 from the Coastal Conservancy for wildfire fuels management projects on Fitch Mountain and at the Healdsburg Ridge Open Space Preserve.
$505,000 was awarded for defensible space and fuels management projects at the Fitch Mountain Open Space Preserve and $414,000 was awarded for fuel management and control line projects at the Healdsburg Ridge Open Space area.
“A major portion of the grant is going to be for grazing animals. Hopefully we’ll have goats out on Fitch Mountain on July 4,” said Healdsburg Fire Department Division Chief and Fire Marshal Linda Collister.
Fitch Mountain projects include the goat grazing project and the creation of shaded fuel breaks. Prior to the start of the vegetation management work, biological bird and archeological surveys will be conducted in order to comply with environmental oversight and regulations.
“Fitch Mountain HOA and the COPE group had written a community wildfire protection plan and one of their objectives was to create a defensible space and fuel reduction on the open space, so what we’re trying to do is protect the open space from a structure fire that may occur,” Collister said.
With the grant funds, the department is also going to hire a professional geologist in order to improve fire roads and trails in the area.
“We’re going to also do trail improvements. We work closely with community services so we’re going to hire a professional geologist and improve the fire roads and for the wintertime, reduce the erosion up on the mountain. We’re going to also update the vegetation management plan and hire a registered forester because the management plan was written prior to all of the wildfires,” Collister said.
At the Healdsburg Ridge Open Space Preserve, goats will also be used for vegetation management and shaded fuel breaks and control lines will be created.
“What this basically means is that we are going to put some control lines around the perimeter of the open space because there is a lot of housing and residences that are backing up to the open space that we have to protect,” Collister said. “We also have on the Callihan property, a city easement where we work with the utility department and public works and community services because we have water reservoirs up there, water treatment and we have the police and fire communication towers and high voltage power lines so we want to make sure that we can protect those during a wildfire.”
An additional $30,000 grant from the county will be used to complete a vegetation treatment program for continued CEQA compliance. “This will allow us to do additional work outside of the open space,” Collister said.
Weed abatement work
The Healdsburg Fire Department also conducts fire fuel management through their weed abatement program, which is overseen by Collister. Initial weed abatement inspections were conducted in April. There were approximately 286 parcels that were listed on the initial inspection.
“The fire department does the inspection of parcels within the city during our annual weed abatement program. On May 17 with that list, our city council declared public nuisance and set a time and place for the public hearing and then after that, the property owners on the list were mailed a notice and are given 30 days to abate (the weeds) or protest it (at the June 21 city council meeting),” Collister explained.
She said when it gets close to that 30-day deadline, the fire department tries to contact the folks who are still on the list.
“I am happy to say, as of Friday, there were only two parcels that were left (on the weed abatement list). I contacted them and one of them has goats and sheep on it and the owner did say he was going to go out and complete that if it wasn’t to our satisfaction. The second owner is going to come out within a couple days,” Collister said.
If those two properties fail to complete their weed abatement, the city will force abate the properties and charge the owners for their service.
“We haven’t had to do that in probably 14 years. It is a really good process and I have to say thank you to the community and the city departments for doing all of the weed abatement,” Collister said.
