An Update on Fire Management by the San Lorenzo Valley Water District

and a Vision for a Fire-Resistant and Fire-Resilient Landscape in the Santa Cruz Mountains

December 8, 2021

Larry Ford

Friends of San Lorenzo Valley Water

The summer and fall 2021 fire season ended – to the great relief of San Lorenzo Valley residents – with the arrival of significant rainstorms in late October. A little more is expected in December. The valley has received about 14 inches of rain to date: two-thirds of the total rainfall received the previous rain-year (only 21.5 inches) and one-quarter of the annual average (47 inches in Ben Lomond). The rainfall added its own temporary stress (as evacuations were ordered in the face of potential debris flows) to the continuing COVID-19 Pandemic, but it meant that the valley had at least survived the year with no major fires, no repeat of the terrible August 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire, no further fire damage to the SLV Water District’s infrastructure, and a respite from the fear and risks of a major catastrophic wind-driven wildfire roaring across the mountains and valley.

Needless to say, the threat of fire will return anew in 2022, and it’s impossible to know what fate may befall us. The current respite, however, provides us with a perfect opportunity to take revised stock of our situation. What progress have we made to date in protecting our valley from a catastrophic wildfire, and what progress can we seek to make in the months and years ahead? What further investment can we make in preserving both our lives and our property (and, conversely, what investments are we tacitly refusing to make out of either ignorance or misplaced optimism)? This brief update is intended to promote and facilitate further dialogue.

SLVWD’s Fire Management Efforts to Date

The San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD) is an obvious and critical component of our valley’s fire resilience. I interviewed Carly Blanchard, the Water District’s Environmental Programs Manager, on November 16, 2021 to discuss the District’s accomplishments to date.

Before the 2020 CZU Fire, the Water District had begun planning for fire management on its lands and to upgrade its facilities, to:

• Assure continuing water supplies for customers and emergency fire flow in hydrants

• Reduce fire fuels on its lands

• Maintain access for maintenance and operation of all facilities

• Harden vulnerable buildings, tanks, and pipes

• Improve capabilities to support emergency response agencies in fighting any fires and protecting property

In 2009, the Water District completed the Fire Management chapter of the “San Lorenzo Valley Water District Watershed Management Plan.” This comprehensive resource assessment provided detailed information about fire history, expected fire effects, related government and consultant studies, and fire management options in the San Lorenzo Valley. What it lacked was a detailed professional plan for managing current Water District infrastructure and fire risks in the Water District and wider region, given the potential threat of more major wildfires.

To fill this gap, the Water District hired a fire management consultant team (led by Panorama Environmental) in March 2020. The consulting team began planning with the Water District, and when the CZU Fire swept into the valley in August, the consultants provided critical expertise and assistance with satellite images of fire progress and vulnerabilities within the Water District.

The consultants continued their planning after the CZU Fire, and by May 2021, they completed the “San Lorenzo Valley Water District, Post-Fire Recovery, Critical Asset Hardening, Vegetation, and Fuels Management Plan,” which the Board of Directors approved. By then, the consultants and Water District staff had begun the laborious process of applying for environmental permits as well as seeking additional grants to implement the plan. California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) permitting was completed in September 2021, covering all the Water District’s planned fire management activities.

In June 2021, the Water District received a $200,000 fuel reduction grant from the California Coastal Conservancy. This grant funded the CEQA permitting, a registered professional forester, and vegetation management consultants to complete fuel reduction at four well sites, two tanks, and one booster site. Work began in November with completion scheduled for early December 2021.

In August 2021, the Water District received a $480,000 Forest Health grant through the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CALFIRE). This will support additional fuel reduction, plantings, and removal of hazardous eucalyptus trees and other invasive pest plants on Water District lands. A major challenge in pandemic times has been high costs for contractors, especially for off-site disposal of the woody fuels.

While the fuel reduction work is proceeding, the Water District has received the first of several other expected Forest Improvement grants from CALFIRE. The Water District hired its fire management consultant (Panorama Environmental) to prepare a Forest Management Plan for its lands, due in December 2021. Subsequent grants from CALFIRE as well as carbon pollution mitigation funds will support additional fuel reduction, planting, and invasive pest plant removal.

Most recently, the Water District approved a comprehensive Water System Master Plan prepared over the past two years by Akel Engineering. This plan identifies pipelines that need to be replaced with larger diameter pipes in order to provide adequate fire flow.

Looking Toward the Future

It is great to see the Water District taking these responsible small steps toward a safer San Lorenzo Valley, but nobody can imagine that there isn’t significantly more for us to do. For example, consider this recent update from a local insurance agent at CSAA (AAA auto and home insurance): zip code 95018 is now ineligible for new policies for home-owners’ insurance (leaving the far more expensive California Fair Insurance as the only remaining option). This is true even for neighborhoods which have obtained the Firewise USA certification. Also, insurance rates will necessarily increase for all in order to cover the damages already incurred. The lesson here is that failing to invest adequately in the security of our community will inevitably cost all of us dearly.

The Friends of San Lorenzo Valley Water recognizes that a large-scale effort is needed to establish and maintain a fire-resistant and fire-resilient landscape across the entire San Lorenzo Valley, Ben Lomond Mountain, and indeed the Santa Cruz Mountains. Not doing so will leave us with high risks of major wildfires in the near future, and associated damage to SLV Water District infrastructure, private property, watershed integrity, water quality, and possibly human life. Such risks have been growing for decades due to excessive fire suppression, but they are now being escalated by more frequent severe weather events associated with climate change. We can’t control climate for now, but we can control fire fuel accumulations and modify our homes and Water District infrastructure. In addition, it is time for us to grapple seriously with the need to revise our aesthetic senses of how wildlands should look. The choice between substantially thinner forests and shrublands versus a burnt landscape should be an easy one for us to make. The middle ground would be to appreciate occasional smoke, blackened vegetation, and more grazing livestock.

The SLV Water District can be a valuable partner in this mission, but we need a multi-agency and community wide effort in the region to develop and implement such a large-scale vegetation management plan. It must reduce fire fuels in all vegetation types (forest, shrub, grass, and open spaces within urban and rural developed lands) because it all burns. The effort will require innovative and conventional means to thin woody vegetation types, control herbaceous and understory forest ladder fuels, and cooperate with residents and property owners. Such work would include careful collaborative professional planning, then extensive wildland fuel clearing by hand and machine, prescribed burning, and livestock grazing-- continuously. We need a vision of the resulting landscape to guide these fuels management actions, and to gain support from community members. One of the obvious sources for such vision and effective practices is our local indigenous community, who centuries ago used strategic fire fuel management as a primary objective for management of the lands where they lived, harvested food, and enjoyed their culture. Accounts from early Spanish explorers suggest a different landscape existed then, with extensive prescribed burns and more prairies and open understories of woodlands. Can we find a way to cooperate with all, combine indigenous and new scientific knowledge, conduct collaborative experiments, and move toward a fire-resistant and fire-resilient landscape?

Find more information about indigenous fire management in our region here:

• Peninsula Open Space Trust Webinar “The Indigenous History of the Bay Area: A 3-Part Webinar.” (see especially Part 2). 2020. (https://openspacetrust.org/blog/indigenoushistory/ )

• Jones, G.A. 2014. “Coast Redwood Fire History and Land Use in the Santa Cruz Mountains, California.” Master’s Thesis, San Jose State University. (https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8016&context=etd_theses )

• Lightfoot, K.G. et al. 2013. “Anthropogenic Burning on the Central California Coast in Late Holocene and Early Historical Times: Findings, Implications, and Future Directions.” California Archaeology 5(2):371–390. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272312807_Anthropogenic_Burning_on_th e_Central_California_Coast_in_Late_Holocene_and_Early_Historical_Times_Findings_I mplications_and_Future_Directions )