With a sample size of two.. Tahoe and Frisco, it seems like communities with well-resourced inhabitants have less controversy over wildfire mitigation and possibly other topics.The other possibility is that many folks are getting along better than we think- across the country- but perhaps the media universe does not share those accounts equally.
This is a comprehensive article worth reading but may have a paywall. For those of you interested in the project documents, they are here.
People in the small Summit County town of Frisco used to call heavily wooded federal land adjacent to town “the asbestos forest,” because it seemed impervious to wildfire. That illusion went up in smoke, though, after nearby wildfires in 2005 and 2017 threatened homes and persuaded them they needed to address the threat on their doorstep.
Since then, state and federal agencies have joined them to discuss ways to reduce dead trees and other potential wildfire fuels in the forest nearby, not only for the threat they pose to Frisco, but also to the Dillon Reservoir bordering town to the east. Wildfire runoff could contaminate the reservoir, which represents about 40% of Denver Water’s supply to the metro area.
Earlier this month, Frisco — which measures less than two square miles and has a population of about 3,000 — and those agencies worked out a plan for wildfire fuel reduction on national forest land. But in doing so, they also took that opportunity to expand recreation opportunities in a 3,000-acre area south and east of town, colloquially known as Frisco’s “Backyard.”
Tying it all together
The work will begin this summer, when Frisco begins construction of a 1.3-mile summer hiking trail and a 1.4-mile Nordic ski trail connecting the Peninsula Recreation Area, which is north of Colorado Highway 9, with the Backyard on the other side of the highway. In late summer, the town plans to begin rebuilding, improving or re-routing an additional 12.3 miles of trails.
It also hopes to begin construction of 4.7 miles of new trails and adopt 14.3 miles of “social trails” — unofficial pathways that have been created by human traffic — for addition to the existing forest service trail network.
“We’re looking at them together, trying to make a logical system where we’re not duplicating routes and where we’re considering how the trails and the recreation experience interact with the proposed fuels treatments,” Massman explained.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit Summit Huts Association plans to build an overnight hut at the Peninsula Recreation Area in partnership with the town. Summit Huts already operates five backcountry huts in Summit County and will fundraise to build the Frisco hut.
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Wildfires are a “legit concern”
But it was the fire mitigation plan that paved the way for the recreation improvements.While Frisco is small, it acts as a sort of gateway town for the Breckenridge and Copper Mountain ski areas, and to some degree for people heading over Vail Pass to the ski resorts further along I-70. As a result, it boasts an assortment of stores, restaurants and other businesses that generate sales tax revenue, enabling the town to pursue ambitious projects despite its small size.
That includes more than $780,000 the town spent on the National Environmental Policy resource management study (approved this month) regarding the wildfire risk they face and ways to mitigate it. It was a direct reaction to those fires in 2005 and 2017.
“We were all like, ‘It’s a legit concern, we actually need to do more around fire mitigation, we have a real problem,’” said Agee, the town spokeswoman. “It’s not that we were dumb and didn’t think that fire danger was legit, but that really made us think harder.”
Fuels treatment means reducing materials that could readily burn and spread wildfire. The Backyard has a lot of lodgepole pine trees that were killed by the mountain pine beetle. Fuel reduction work will focus on removing dead and live lodgepole pines.
“The aspen trees, the spruce trees and the fir trees, those will all stay,” said Massman, adding that they are immune to the pine beetle. “The area is steep, there is no real road access, so most of the treatments will occur with hand crews cutting with chainsaws and then hand-piling logs for future pile burning. It’s not like a prescribed burn. We’d make these piles and then we’d burn them in the winter when snow is on the ground.”
Did they say anything in the rest of the article about what the residents are doing about defensible space around their homes? It seems like the priority for federal dollars should be where private dollars are committed to that – a higher priority than locals wanting recreational improvements.