Special Notice / Hearing: None__
Vote Required: None
To: Honorable Board of Supervisors
From: Nicholas J. Calderon, Parks Director
Subject: San Mateo County Parks Department's Wildfire Mitigation Program
RECOMMENDATION:
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Accept the report on San Mateo County Parks Department's Wildfire Mitigation Program.
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BACKGROUND:
In response to the increasing scale and severity of wildfires occurring throughout California, including the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire, the San Mateo County Parks Department ("Department") developed a 5-year Wildfire Fuel Management Program ("Program"), which this Board accepted at its February 23, 2021 meeting. The goal of the program was to improve public safety and mitigate wildfire risk by reducing the amount of fire fuel in the park system and facilitating safe access for fire agencies responding to a fire.
Since the Program's inception in 2021, the Department-which manages the County's 24 parks, recreation areas, and historic sites that comprise over 16,000 acres of land, mostly located within or in proximity to the wildland-urban interface-has completed over 1,800 acres of fire fuel reduction work. Treatment of fire fuel on parkland has created and/or expanded fuel breaks which are designed to reduce the risk of a groundfire becoming a canopy fire, ensure fire agencies can have reliable access to the interior of parks to contain and suppress fires, and reduce the amount fuel present along park boundaries with residential neighborhoods. Moreover, using the Program as a guide, the Department has obtained over $7,600,000 in state and federal grant funds for fuel reduction project implementation in County parks.
Since its creation, the Program has also served as an effective planning, decision-making, and permitting tool, enabling the Department to effectively appropriate resources for the implementation and maintenance of Program projects, to monitor project progress, and to adapt implementatio...
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