Recap of the Annual 2022 Chumstick Wildfire Stewardship Coalition Meeting

The 2022 Annual CWSC Leavenworth Town Meeting was held on May 31, with the sole purpose of educating the community with progress made towards wildfire prevention for the summer of 2022.

Entities that presented during this meeting included Chelan County Fire District #3 (CCFD#3), the Cascadia Conservation District, the City of Leavenworth, Chelan County Natural Resources, Chelan County PUD, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and the U.S. Forest Service. There was also a guest appearance from Chelan County Commissioner Bob Bugert, who talked more in-depth on a proposed lumber mill for Chelan County.

CWSC Director Barbara Carrillo and Chairman John Callahan introduced their organization’s key mission to inform landowners of wildfire resiliency and the Chumstick Remote Water Tank Storage Project, a collaborative project with CCFD#3 to increase the local water supply. This would involve the installation of 10k gallon underground tanks, which would result in quicker fire suppression and would involve the cooperation with private property owners.

CCFD#3 Chief Dave Nalle and firefighter Jessica Campbell recapped the events of the debris cleaning and chipping events, resulting in 196 volunteered hours on the project for a total of 26 homes. They both addressed hazardous fuel reduction and retrofitting homes to withstand future wildfires.

Cascadia Conservation District representative Patrick Haggerty gave a quick overview of the organization’s mission statement and then switched to the next presenter.

City of Leavenworth Building Official Mark Barnes presented the city’s Wildland-Urban Interface Building Standards (WUIBS), and was required to adopt the state’s overall WUIBS code. Barnes stated that 9-10 single-family residences have already been built to these new standards, including new additions such as stormwater control and converting gutters into metal gutters so that fire can’t travel up the siding of the home.

Chelan County Natural Resources brought Hannah Pygot as their key speaker, who overviewed some fish passage improvements and stream restoration, culvert replacements, bridge installation, instream complexity projects, debris removal, along with wildfire hazard mitigation projects they have been working on. They also report weed control with Reed Canary Grass and that water quantity and groundwater levels have increased due to a slower release of water.

Justin Gelb was the chief representative for the U.S. Forest Service and presented the $14 mil. Central Washington Initiative which was split in the following projects: $1.6 mil. for the Upper Peshastin fuel treatment work, $2.5 mil. for the Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) projects, planning and implementation projects for the Heritage contracts, and stand projects for the Chumstick area. Gelb also stated that his organization used part of the funds from the infrastructure bill to hire 12 new members to the Forest organization.

Chelan PUD spokeswoman Rachel Hansen summarized some clean-up projects her organization had been working on, which include eliminating growing branches near power lines, removed roughly 5,000 hazardous trees, more frequent inspections, applying fire retardant on phones, converted 34 poles into steel poles, and increased the sensitivity on their fire safety outage management system.

The aforementioned system would be located within Lake Wenatchee, Plain, and Stevens Pass areas due to how vulnerable those areas are to wildfires. Hansen reported that she does not expect for these systems to be used, with the last report made back in 2014.

Disturbance ecologist Garrett Meigs had presented the DNR’s 20-year Forest Health Strategic Plan, overviewing all of the goals and strategies for wildfire mitigation and future treatments to be used by 2037. During this presentation, Meigs provided a link to examine the forest health for the Chumstick to LP area, which can be found here.

A few Leavenworth residents had asked about future logging opportunities in Chelan County, which earned a response from WA Forests Program Manager Lloyd McGee who stated the fact there was currently a lack of loggers, contractors, and bidders within the region to bring a sustainable infrastructure for logging.

Chelan County Commissioner Bob Bugert provided an update with the Wildland Interface Code and wanted to loop CWSC into the conversation, with the hopes of fully updating the code by the summer of 2022. Bugert also shared some news about an approved contract with SE Consulting for a supply analysis for a proposed Chelan County lumber mill.