FEMA delays grants for reducing wildfire hazards in Calif. hills

By Cecily Burt
The Oakland Tribune via The Contra Costa Times

OAKLAND, Calif. — Federal emergency officials said this week that four grants to reduce wildfire hazards in the Oakland hills will be held up until a more intensive review of the overall environmental impact of the work is completed.

The news from FEMA was a setback for UC Berkeley, the city of Oakland and the East Bay Regional Park District, all of which are relying on the grants more than $5 million in all to pay for the removal of eucalyptus, pine and acacia trees from steep wooded ridges above Claremont and Strawberry canyons and Frowning Ridge.

The agencies were selected to receive the highly competitive grants in 2005 and 2006. But the announcement means that the money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency won't be released any time soon probably not for two years.

It takes that long to complete, publish and circulate for public input a more exhaustive environmental review legally known as an environmental-impact statement. FEMA will pay for the expensive new study, which will replace a draft environmental assessment of the tree removal work proposed in the grant applications. That draft report was published in December 2007.

A group of people known as the Hills Conservation Network responded to the draft report and challenged the university's methods for reducing fire hazards by clear-cutting the trees. Among other points, the group believes that the eucalyptus are no more dangerous than native species. They also said that UC's proposal to leave layers of wood chips on the ridges allows weeds and invasive, nonnative brush to flourish.

FEMA officials have worked with the university to resolve some of the issues raised by the group, and it seemed last summer that most of the questions had or were being resolved. At the time FEMA officials acknowledged that it was taking unusually long to act on the applications.

That makes Monday's cryptic announcement by FEMA all the more maddening, said Barry Pilger, a resident who lost his Buckingham Boulevard home in the Oct. 20, 1991, firestorm that killed more than 25 people and destroyed more than 3,500 homes. He said that FEMA last year asserted it would require a more extensive environmental analysis of the impacts of the grant applications, then changed its mind. Now the agency has done it again.

"I would characterize this decision as a flip-flop of catastrophic proportions," Pilger said. "Two more years of environmental work could well result in fuel loads in these areas double what it was when the grants were written. It could result in loss of life and property."

Blame it on complexity
A statement by David Kennard, hazard mitigation assistance branch chief of FEMA Region IX, said that the agency had completed its evaluation of the grant applications and determined that "the complexity of the proposed actions" required a more extensive and exhaustive environmental review.

"The regional environmental officer determined there was widespread cumulative effects from these projects that had to be considered," Kennard said. "The (four) projects are proposing to do a lot of work and it became clear that we couldn't just isolate the impacts ... without considering the broader impact on the whole ridge. ... Removing 10 trees here and 10 trees there, (individually) it's just a small number of trees, but overall, it's a huge number of trees."

Dan Grassetti, a spokesman for the Hills Conservation Network, said he was "heartened" that FEMA was requiring a larger review.

"This is what we've been arguing all along. ... Irrespective of how you feel about the specifics, whether you hate eucalyptus or love eucalyptus, that's not really the issue here," Grassetti said. "This is really a significant change in the ecosystem in a large area. ... Before we got involved these were being treated as individual projects. But that's not true. You need to look at the entirety of what's going on here."

'Reasonable' steps
Scott Stephens, associate professor of fire science at UC Berkeley, said the university's methodology for reducing the fire hazard was "reasonable." He said that native trees and plants eventually take root in areas where eucalyptus are removed, and the proposed work plan leaves plenty of eucalyptus intact from less vulnerable areas, such as ridges where east winds can act like a torch.

"When the eucalyptus burn under an east wind, they can throw embers a half-mile or more," Stephens said. "From a fire standpoint, what is being done to remove the eucalyptus is in line with what we want to do (to reduce fire hazards)."

In the meantime, the delay in funding allows the hazard to continue, unabated.

"Inevitably we will get another east wind and we will have another disaster," Stephens said. "When you look at an area that has already been treated versus what hasn't, the risk is 10 percent greater. ... The physics haven't changed. We still have east winds, we have the topography, we have the trees. There will be a disaster."

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