The District of Clearwater (DOC) recently received funding from the B.C. government to complete fuel management projects in the area.
The $181,000 will be used for FireSmarting in some of the town’s parks and crown land in the community as well as write prescriptions that tell how the DOC plans to conduct fuel mitigation in other areas of the district.
“We’re required to go onto the area we want to fuel mitigate and write a prescription that tells how you’d go about the mitigations,” said Leslie Groulx, chief executive officer for the DOC.
“Would you limb the trees up eight feet? Take all the underbrush out? What would be suitable for that particular area of trees to create FireSmarting and fuel reduction?”
Last fall the DOC received $35,000 in funding through the Community Resiliency Program to update its Community Wildfire Plan, which was initially done in 2012, and around the same time district also applied for the above-mentioned funding to complete fuel management within the municipal boundaries.
The Community Wildfire Plan is currently being drafted and is expected to be presented to council and the public on May 9.
The DOC is planning on putting the fuel mitigation work out for bidding to local contractors, but the process is being delayed by the current COVID-19 restrictions, which at the present time excludes wildfire fuel mitigation as an essential service.
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