_{Thumbnail photo: California Coastal Commissioners met with California Department of Fish and Wildlife Scientists and Smith River Alliance representatives at Pacific Shores last year. | File photo by Jessica Cejnar Andrews}

Among the items discussed at Tuesday’s Del Norte County Board of Supervisors meeting:

Timber Harvest Near Hunter Creek Subdivision: 

Supervisors agreed to send a letter to Cal Fire outlining their concerns that a Green Diamond timber harvest plan could impact drinking water and increase wildfire risk in the Hunter Creek Subdivision.

The proposed letter came from District 5 Supervisor Dean Wilson, who said he attended a presentation the timber company held for residents in the Klamath area subdivision. Green Diamond’s West Tepo Timber Harvesting Plan encompasses 294 acres, 60 percent of which will be clearcut, he said. Forty percent of those 294 acres will be set aside for selective harvesting, Wilson said.

“Within the selective harvest plan, there is no proposed plan for removing the debris after harvesting,” he told his colleagues “All those limbs and everything, they’ll just leave it on the ground to be additional fuel for fire hazards.”

Wilson said the county’s letter asks Green Diamond to include debris removal in their timber harvest plan.

Wilson also raised concerns about any pesticides Green Diamond plans to use as part of its timber harvesting plan, noting that Hunter Creek is the sole source of drinking water for the Hunter Valley Community Services District, which serves 68 homes.

Residents were also concerned about erosion and sediment leaching into their water source, Wilson said.

Though he voted in favor of sending the comment letter to Cal Fire, District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard, said Green Diamond is in a “funky catch-22” when it comes to cleaning up debris following a timber harvest.

According to Howard, who spent a decade working for Green Diamond, it’s often more cost effective to leave limbs and other debris from a harvest behind, create piles and burn it, though that might put them at odds with the North Coast Air Quality Management District. 

Cal Fire also designates a limited amount of time for Green Diamond to burn that debris, he said. 

“From a wildlife standpoint, the residents should also understand that the fuel load, in a very rare instance, could catch fire, [but] it also is an important ground cover for critters that remain behind and for the reduction of sediment flows post harvest,” Howard said. “When you remove a forest canopy and you have torrential downpours which are extremely common here, it does cause sediment erosion within those cleared areas and those limbs help catch any of those flows.”

Pacific Shores Sale:  County supervisors proceeded with the sale of 18 county-owned parcels in the Pacific Shores subdivision to the Wildlife Conservation Board.

This decision came after Assistant County Administrative Officer Randy Hooper said he did a “windshield survey” to determine whether the properties could be used to mitigate wetland damage caused by future infrastructure projects. He determined that the parcels are already functioning as healthy wetlands or dune habitat and aren’t eligible for mitigation purposes, according to a July 11 memo to the Board of Supervisors.

The proposal to bank the properties for future mitigation purposes came from District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short. At the Board’s July 8 meeting, Short referred to the California Coastal Commission’s requirement that the Border Coast Regional Airport Authority set aside land to mitigate for wetland damage as a result of its runway safety project years ago. He asked Hooper to determine what it would cost the county to hold onto the 18 Pacific Shores parcels.

According to Hooper’s memo to the Board, the parcels’ small sizes and the fact they already house healthy habitat make their mitigation value low. He also argued that transferring the parcels to the Wildlife Conservation Board would reduce the “‘checkerboard’ pattern of fragmented ownership that currently impedes large-scale land management.”

The transfer of the parcels to the state is estimated to bring about $125,000 to Del Norte County, according to Hooper’s staff report. The land will be incorporated into the Lake Earl Wildlife Area, Hooper said.