By Jim Peifer, Executive Director
Though summer is behind us, the risk of wildfires persists in our region’s forests. According to Cal Fire, eight of California’s 10 most destructive wildfires started in either September, October, or November. Regional Water Authority (RWA) member agencies are hard at work on projects to reduce wildfire risk and protect our precious water supplies.
In the bustle of daily life, it’s not unusual to lose sight of where our water comes from. But it’s worth remembering that our water flows from the Sierra Nevada forests,
French Meadows Forest Restoration Project Operations (2023). Photo courtesy of PCWA.
where water falls as snow and rain, then flows downhill into our reservoirs and groundwater aquifers.
A century of well-intentioned but overzealous firefighting has left our watershed forests too dense with trees. Throw in the growing influence of climate change — hotter summers and more intense storms — and the threat to our water supply is immense.
When a fire sparks in these forests it easily becomes catastrophic, destroying all trees and reducing the forest’s capacity to store and filter runoff. In addition, post-fire runoff can erode ash, debris, and productive soil into our reservoirs, decreasing water storage capacity and damaging infrastructure.
This is what we saw with the King Fire in 2014, which burned 97,000 acres and cost RWA member agencies, like Placer County Water Agency (PCWA), millions of dollars in cleanup and repair work.
Placer County Water Agency: Restoring French Meadows, Protecting Water Quality
After the King Fire, PCWA began the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project, an innovative public-private partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and others to reduce fire risk on 28,800 acres surrounding French Meadows Reservoir. Now completing its sixth season of work, the project is about 60 percent complete.
Work is underway to thin overgrown forests through careful logging, brush clearing, and prescribed burns. So far, roughly 7,000 acres have been treated. Prescribed burning is also planned for this fall, managed by the Forest Service, contingent on resource availability and climate conditions.
There are numerous challenges to this type of work in remote areas of the watershed. One of the realizations of these projects is that they are not “one and done,” said Darin Reintjes, PCWA’s Director of Resource Management. For example, French Meadows project managers already anticipate the need to re-treat the lands restored in the first phase of the project five years ago.
Continue reading here on Maven’s Notebook to learn about the steps PCWA and Yuba Water Agency are taking to manage forest health, reduce wildfire risks, and protect critical water sources through restoration projects and collaborative efforts.
Jim Peifer is Executive Director of the Regional Water Authority, representing nearly two dozen water providers serving 2.2 million people in the greater Sacramento region. Learn more at rwah2o.org.
