In late July, 2024, fires raged across the Front Range. As Nederland residents followed updates on the Alexander Mountain Fire in Longmont, the Quarry Fire in Boulder, and the Stone Canyon Fire in Lyons, suddenly the Lake Shore Fire began near Gross Reservoir. Then, as social media came alive with concerned residents sharing updates and tips for personal evacuation plans, another small fire sparked in Boulder County, started by tourists lighting off fireworks.
The intense “fire season” experienced in the mountains this year created a stir in the community, causing newer residents to register their phone numbers with Everbridge, download the Watch Duty app, and prepare their go-bags. Older residents shared advice, provided historical context, and lamented about the perceived lack of preventive actions from the local authorities.
However, several forest and fire protection entities, local authorities, and professional organizations have worked together for two years to update a definitive plan which encompasses many areas of concern shared by residents, including preparing one’s home for wildfire, evacuation preparedness, and creating resilient landscapes.
The Nederland and Timberline Fire Protection Districts’ Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) has been in development for two years, in tandem with both Boulder County’s and Gilpin County’s protection plans.
The Mountain-Ear first reported on the Nederland and Timberline CWPP in July 2023 with the article “CWPP: Protecting the community from wildfires” by Omayra Acevedo. https://www.themtnear.com/articles/cwpp-protecting-the-communityfrom wildfires/
In that article, Kirin Riddell, Fire Adapted Communities Coordinator, explained how a CWPP serves the community.
“Knowing about these actions by familiarizing themselves with the CWPP will allow community members to understand how they can participate in collective community action on wildfire preparedness and take a leading role in turning plans into reality in their neighborhoods and landscapes,” Riddell said.
“Additionally, identifying priority projects and actions in a CWPP can open the door to discovering sources of funding for those projects.”
The Boulder Watershed Collective (BWC) began the preliminary outreach for drafting the region’s CWPP update back in 2022. BWC facilitated the project, which included gathering and managing the many partners that were to collaborate on the plan.
“The end result may be a lot of information to digest but it’s important for people to see the effort put into it,” Nederland Fire Protection District’s (NFPD) Fire Marshal Andrew Joslin told The Mountain-Ear.
“(BWC) did an amazing job keeping everyone together and moving it forward; and there was so much effort put into getting more of a collaborative input from our community, which is extremely important to us.”
Community outreach was a major focus of the entire process, as BWC’s experience in drafting similar plans across the Peak to Peak area informed them that resident involvement is the key to creating a successful plan.
“They’ve done these plans across the county,” Joslin explained. “They’re experienced with working with all the different stakeholders, creating a process, and they have a formula to create these plans. They have input from tons of different experts and then they ask us for that localized input and to make the plan pertinent to our jurisdiction.”
The Mountain-Ear reported in April 2024 that a draft of the CWPP, which had been informed by community outreach, was going to be released to the public for even further review, with those additional comments from residents to affect the final draft of the plan.
This extended period of outreach was reported in the article “Nederland/TFPD CWPP update” by Wes Isenhart. https://www.themtnear.com/articles/nederland-tfpd-cwpp-update/
Meg Halford, Wildfire Partners Forest and Grasslands Project Coordinator for Boulder County, spoke to The Mountain-Ear about the County’s contributions to the formation of Nederland and Timberline’s CWPP, and about their successes in community outreach.
“County level plans are really the umbrella for local level plans,” Halford said. “It really is to augment those local level efforts and get local districts to inform us on what we can do to support them.”
“We had representation from the County Office of Disaster Management, from the Sheriff’s Office, and from local fire protection districts, and it was this core team informing that whole assessment and planning process,” Halford explained.
“Then the biggest part was the community engagement across the county. We promised the public that we wanted their feedback, we wanted their input, to hear their concerns, challenges, and needs so to be sure that we can integrate it all. And the public really showed up, which is fantastic.”
Halford noted that engagement from the community has always been an issue in Boulder County.
“I’ve been in some form or fashion involved in CWPPs in the last 25 years and back in the olden days when you had a public event you usually had two or three people showing up and there was no input,” Halford said.
Halford added that the engagement process for the County’s CWPP update this time around was more proactive than in the past. More than nine outreach events were planned across all corners of the county, and an online survey was released which yielded close to 1,800 responses.
On August 20, 2024, Maya MacHamer, Director of BWC, Applied Social Scientist Erin Fried, and BWC Consultant Julien Blundell delivered a presentation to the Nederland Board of Trustees, providing them with an update on the status of the CWPP.
The presentation was covered in the article “TEENS, Inc. childcare lease in process.” https://www.themtnear.com/articles/ teens-inc-childcare-lease-in-process/
Regarding community engagement, BWC’s presentation to the Board highlighted that three “Community Visioning Workshops” were held in 2022, as well as 38 interviews. In 2023, BWC hosted a CWPP “Kickoff Meeting” and four “Mapping Community Workshops,” as well as releasing an online survey.
NFPD Fire Chief Charlie Schmidtmann spoke to The Mountain-Ear about BWC’s efforts in engaging Nederland residents.
“They have gone, in my mind, above and beyond reaching out to the communities and neighborhoods,” Schmidtmann said. “But it wasn’t as well attended as I would’ve hoped.”
According to BWC’s projections in their presentation, the outreach events in 2022 and 2023 were attended by a total amount of 193 residents, which includes the responses to the online survey.
The Mountain-Ear’s coverage of Nederland’s CWPP will continue next week with a deep dive into what each of the collaborative partners contributed to the plan, and on how the plan encourages programs about wildfire resilience that can be, and already have been, implemented. To view the full 263 page CWPP, go to: https://tinyurl.com/CWPP2024.
