Interest Grows in Community Wildfire Protection Plan Meetings

• Neighborhood by Neighborhood Approach May Result in Locally Oriented Preparation Plans

BY BILL KOENEKER

An organizer of the Community Wildfire Protection Plan indicated interest is growing in the public meetings that are being held throughout the Malibu coast and Santa Monica Mountains and that future meetings will be able to accommodate them.
“We’re hearing from more folks that more are interested in the CWPP than could attend the meetings. We’re working on designing a larger public meeting in January to review what we did now (the mapping), and give folks a chance for further input,” said Tracy Katelman, who works for ForeverGreen Forestry, the contractor who conducts the meetings under the umbrella of various federal, state, county and city agencies that have endorsed the process.
Katelman said the meetings are an opportunity for the public to spell out the specifics of their neighborhoods in terms of planning or preventing the spread of wildfires to residential areas.
She said governmental agencies, such as the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the City of Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area among others, have signed on to the process, which will use the public input, then organized by priority for a final document that is a set of recommendations.
When asked to describe the full implications of the plan, Katelman said, “The community plan does not have legal standing. These are recommendations, they are not mandatory.”
Katelman, who said she had initially gotten a lot of questions about it, indicated she did not believe that insurance companies would use the maps generated from the set of recommendations. “I’ve never heard of any [insurance] agency using them,” she added.
She said the final document is most useful for neighborhood fire councils or even various government agencies to utilize the data if they are attempting to get funding or doing a project. “It shows a consensus about what is important for the community,” the forestry expert said.
Katelman cited as an example how some neighborhoods identify large pines and eucalyptus as tree hazards that could help spread wildfire.
Currently, the City of Malibu’s Public Safety Commission is discussing some kind of possible ban on hazardous or flammable trees. The data from the CWPP could possibly be used to obtain grant funding for the city, according to Katelman.
There is a timeline for the plan, according to Katelman, who said the draft document will be reviewed by committee and there will be what she called web review of the proposed plan in February. There will be community review of the plan in March, and by mid-April there should be a public draft document. The final plan is scheduled for release in June.
The series of 10 community meetings between Oct. 20 and November 10 and again in January 2010 will allow the public to identify priority projects that would help prepare their homes, neighborhoods and communities for wildfire. The plan covers 100,000 acres in the SMMNRA.
CWPP’s are a federal vehicle for communities to idenfity priority actions for wildfire prevention and overall fire safety on both public and private lands.
Local residents are encouraged to attend the meeting scheduled for their specific community.
For more information and workshop details go to: www.ci.malibu.ca.us/ index.cfm/fuseaction/detail/navid/478/cid/14611/