At a Town Council meeting on Tuesday evening, Keystone considered a measure that would make wildfire fuel hazards, like diseased or dead trees, considered public nuisances. The council unanimously approved the measure\u2019s first reading, meaning it will be read and voted on once more by the council on Aug. 11 before officially becoming part of the town code.<\/p>\n
If passed later this month, the town will be able to \u201cenforce remediation on property owners\u201d who don\u2019t address wildfire hazards on their property, according to a summary of the measure. Hazards are considered public nuisances \u2014 and therefore eligible for enforcement \u2014 if they are within certain distances of infrastructure, including being within 30 feet of a home or within 10 feet of a power line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the environment that we\u2019re dealing with today, there is a number of properties that still have not removed some of their dead trees,\u201d said Andrew Nelson, Keystone\u2019s community development director. \u201cI think the community has done a great job of actually going out and mitigating, but we could do just a little bit better to help protect our critical infrastructure resources and people\u2019s personal property.\u201d<\/p>\n
The council noted that, while most of Keystone\u2019s residents have already done fire mitigation work, the measure would address the few exceptions endangering others property by not mitigating fire dangers on their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes a village to be fire wise, so if you\u2019re on top of it but your neighbors are not, there are challenges there,\u201d said council member Carol Kerr.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Council members voiced their hopes that Keystone residents would continue to self-mitigate their properties risks, but noted that, if the measure passes, they\u2019ll be able to ensure the necessary work gets done.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo have that \u2026 self compliance is always the best opportunity for us as the community, but then there\u2019s also that punitive part depending on the situation,\u201d Nelson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Violations would be found in a myriad of ways, including community tips. The council clarified that they will not be performing specific inspections with the sole purpose of finding hazardous materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s just say we\u2019re doing an inspection on a home that\u2019s being built, and right next door you can see that there\u2019s a dead, dying, diseased tree that\u2019s jeopardizing private property, then we can reach out to that adjacent property owner at that point,\u201d Nelson explained. \u201cIts not something where we\u2019re going to be doing a survey of all the trees in town. \u2026 But as these issues arise, we will address them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The council said it would take steps during the implementation process to ensure that people know about these changes before they can be penalized for having fuels on their property. Some proposed actions included emails to town residents, as well as physical notices by mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a way to notify people,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there should be anyone who\u2019s really surprised at the end of the day that \u2018Oh my gosh, I didn\u2019t know that I had a dying, diseased tree on my property.\u2019 It\u2019s just whether they choose to actually mitigate that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, some council members grappled with the implications of passing the measure, including concerns that it infringes upon the rights of private property owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a major concern for me in terms of government imposing restriction on private property,\u201d said council member Jon Hagenow. \u201cThis is something I struggle with because, at the end of the day, private land is not something that the government should necessarily have major impact on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this, Hagenow did move to approve the measure, citing larger concerns for \u201cthe public health and safety of our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we look at implementing this into the town, there will be folks that are not necessarily happy with the requirement to do X things on their land,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s important to understand that \u2026 it\u2019s the impact it can have on your community. \u2026 Fire doesn\u2019t care that there\u2019s an imaginary property line here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Community members who wish to comment on the measure before it is passed can attend the Aug. 11 Keystone Town Council meeting and participate in public comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a Town Council meeting on Tuesday evening, Keystone considered a measure that would make wildfire fuel hazards,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-800473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}