Proposals to address wildfire dangers face opposition

Two items on today’s City Council agenda related to wildfire prevention have raised alarms among at least two community groups – the Save Our Springs Alliance and Community Not Commodity.

The agenda indicates that the first item would allocate nearly $200,000 for a study of wildland fire fuels by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. The second item is for $7.5 million to pay contractors to manage vegetation and perform prescribed burns. However, the agenda indicates that the current budget does not have that much money for the second item.

Mayor Kirk Watson has expressed his support for those items in his Watson Wire newsletter. On Wednesday, Watson emphasized the danger posed by wildfire and offered this assessment of the items:

With the thousands of acres of parkland and wildlands we manage, Austin is actively working on reducing the fuel for wildfires on public lands. This week, the Council is considering two items to boost wildfire prevention:

• Improving AFD and PARD’s wildfire prevention and the Austin/Travis County Community Wildfire Protection Plan with an updated Wildland fire fuels study on preserve lands.

• Boosting vegetation management and wildfire fuels mitigation funding for PARD’s extensive 12,500 acres of natural areas.

On the other side of the argument is well-known local hydrologist Nico Hauwert, who has been working to prevent passage of the items and has spent many years working to protect the city’s wildlands. Until last year, he was Austin Water’s program manager at the Balcones Canyonland Preserve.

He has written to the mayor and Council urging them to vote no on both items.

Hauwert said that while the U.S. Forest Service has “produced excellent research on the trees’ ability to absorb contaminants, they are well known for promoting myths of attributing tree ‘encroachment’ to ‘fire suppression’ and other myths to promote clear cutting and prescribed burns (‘fuel reduction’) ‘vegetation management.’”

He asks why the city should spend $198,000 on this study when a 2009 study by Baylor University assessed wildfire risk for West Austin.

“Could it be some do not like the Baylor study’s finding that forests have a much lower wildfire risk than grasslands and that ‘fuel reduction’ increases wildfire risk, simply because Austin Water and Austin Parks & Recreation had previously committed to a logging strategy of clearing and prescribed burning?” he asks.

The Save Our Springs Alliance reiterates many of Hauwert’s points, and attorney Bobby Levinski says the environmental group will offer comments at Thursday’s meeting.

Levinski told the Austin Monitor, “Nico is making the case that studies and local experiences show that prescribed burns dry out the soil, increase erosion and encourage fast-burning grasses, which ultimately creates hotter, drier areas more vulnerable to wildfires.”

Community Not Commodity also weighed in, saying in an email to supporters, “Confronting wildfire risk is critical for Austin, but (items 4 and 25) could damage the environment without significantly reducing the threats of wildfires according to local existing studies … and local experts. … The city should pause and discuss the best methods for our location and our climate and not pursue a rushed plan that dries out the soil, increase erosion and encourages fast-growing grasses.”

According to the agenda, funding for the study “is available in the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan Fund and the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 Operating Budget of Austin Water. Funding for the remaining term is subject to available funding in future budgets.”

As for the vegetation management item, the agenda states that although the total contract amount is for up to $7.5 million, only $200,000 is currently available in the Parks and Recreation Department’s operating budget. Funding for the remaining contract term is “contingent upon available funding in future budgets.”

Photo by The National Guard, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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