Tuolumne effort on megafires gets $10 million more from feds. These towns will benefit

A second federal grant will help Tuolumne County residents guard against another megafire.

The $10 million announced Monday is on top of $55 million granted last April for tree thinning, controlled burning and other work.

Some of the new money will go to helping about 1,300 residents reduce woody fuel around their homes. They are in or near Columbia, Cedar Ridge and Mi-Wuk Village.

The county will do the same on 23 miles of its road right-of-way, said an email from Dore Bietz, emergency services coordinator.

Both grants came from the U.S Forest Service, funded by the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.

The latest round also has $250,000 for the Tuolumne Utilities District for planning of wildfire protections around its main water source. An additional $315,600 will go to fuel reduction in the Jamestown area by the Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians.

The $10 million grant will treat residential property around the edges of the Stanislaus National Forest over five years.

“We recognize that to achieve a high level of resilience across our shared landscape, we need to work across all ownership boundaries,” Forest Supervisor Jason Kuiken said in a news release.

Consensus on forest health

Last year’s grant was awarded to a coalition that includes county government, the timber industry, environmental groups and other partners. They agree that the woods have grown too dense due to past logging practices and suppression of gentle fires that used to clear out the understory.

The county has had two of the megafires that have plagued the West. The Stanislaus Complex Fire burned across about 147,000 acres in 1987. The Rim Fire singed about 256,000 acres in 2013.

The blazes reached into Yosemite National Park, just east of the national forest. Hence the coalition’s name, Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions.

Last year’s grant will fund a decade of work in the Stanislaus River watershed from Columbia to Pinecrest. It will treat about 41,000 acres, creating a mosaic that slows flames within about 250,000 acres of public and private land. That is about a quarter of the acreage within the national forest boundary.

The coalition is using selective logging in some places, which supplies the two sawmills in the county. It also is setting intentional fires from fall to spring, which Me-Wuk people have done for millennia.

Space for firefighters to work

Homeowners can apply for money to clear some of the flammable vegetation around their property. This could keep embers from igniting homes, while providing space for fire crews to work.

Columbia is best known for its state park honoring Gold Rush settlers. The money will be available in roughly two square miles of surrounding brush and timber.

Cedar Ridge has several hundred homes amid conifer forest about three miles northwest of Twain Harte.

Mi-Wuk Village is along Highway 108 about three miles northeast of Twain Harte. It, too, has several hundred homes in an overly wooded setting.

The county will use a small part of the grant to promote Firewise Communities. They are partnerships among homeowners, fire departments, foresters and others hoping to ease the threat.

Water system from 1850s

The Tuolumne Utilities District is the largest water supplier for county residents. Its main source is the south fork of the Stanislaus, delivered by a canal dating to the 1850s.

“Funding will allow our community to take significant steps towards wildfire risk reduction and preparedness to protect its precious water system,” General Manager Don Perkins said in the release.

The Chicken Ranch Rancheria includes a casino, surrounded by oaks and other foothill vegetation. The Me-Wuk tribe uses a different spelling than the town higher up on 108.

Advocates say reducing the Tuolumne fire hazard benefits neighboring Stanislaus County. Fewer trees sucking up water could mean more for cities and irrigation districts down below. And flatland residents visit the mountains for hiking, fishing and other recreation.

The 2021 infrastructure act provides $3.5 billion over five years to ease the wildfire risk around the West. A total of $197 million in grants were announced Monday for 100 projects in 22 states.

The Forest Service is “taking critical steps to protect homes, property, businesses and people’s lives from catastrophic wildfires,” Chief Randy Moore said in a separate news release.