Plans to prevent and minimize the impacts of wildfires in the Riverside-Flanders pine barrens region will be presented Tuesday night at a community forum hosted by the state pine barrens commission.
The commission, in cooperation with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Suffolk County parks department, will conduct some clearing and prescribed fire operations on about 315 acres of publicly owned preserved woodlands in the Flanders-Riverside-Northampton area.
Work will begin next spring on 128 acres located immediately south of Anchor Street and extending southward to a point just south of the Suffolk County Water Authority facility located at the south end of Oak Avenue, according to information posted on the pine barrens commission website. See conceptual plan below. Work on the remaining 187 acres in the project area will take place “at a later time when additional funding becomes available.”
The two main objectives of the project, according to the commission, are to reduce the potential for wildfire damage to private property in communities east and north of the project site — classified as “wildland-urban interface” and “home ignition zone” — and to provide ecological enhancements and benefits, the commission said.
According to some, the project doesn’t go far enough to reduce wildfire risks to adjacent homes, while others argue that the work will damage — not enhance — the sensitive pine barrens woodland.
The commission hired Land Use Ecological Services to assess and inventory the pine barrens forest and perform certain maintenance services over a five-year period. In June, representatives of the company outlined plans for the first phase of the project in the area of the Sarnoff Preserve-Pleasure Drive area.
After the presentation, Flanders Fire Chief Joseph Pettit — who had not yet seen the plans — said he was disappointed the commission would draw up plans without consulting with the fire district at the outset.
A succession of Flanders fire chiefs have for years been complaining about the condition of county- and state-owned lands within the Flanders Fire District, which are overgrown with dense underbrush and littered with both fallen and standing dead oak trees, victims of a massive oak die-off a decade ago. Existing fire access lanes, overgrown and blocked by fallen oaks, are largely impassable, firefighters say.
But L.I. Pine Barrens Society executive director Richard Amper disagrees.
“Access to the pine barrens is fine,” Amper told RiverheadLOCAL in June. “Yes, there are some fallen trees but this is not a recreational parkland. It’s a forest preserve. Every time a tree falls down in a forest preserve, you don’t clean it up.”
Amper said he is concerned about the maintenance plans proposed by the commission, especially planned mechanical clearing of undergrowth in the pine barrens. “It alters the ecology of the pine barrens,” he said in an interview after the commission meeting. “The commission needs to look at that very carefully.”
In June, Pine Barrens Wildfire Task Force chairman Chip Bancroft told RiverheadLOCAL he had arranged to have an Urban Search and Rescue Team drill exercise, to be conducted in conjunction with the civil engineering section and fire department at the Westhampton air base, take place in the Flanders Pine Barrens on Aug. 1 and 2. The drill team would use chain saws to clear existing fire lanes, he said. But the exercise didn’t happened as planned, Bancroft said earlier this month. It was scuttled after his announcement, he said. Bancroft said he could offer no further comment.
Legislator Jay Schneiderman, outraged after Pettit gave him a tour of the woods in April, said the conditions of the woodlands is clearly a hazard and needed immediate attention. He asked the county parks commissioner, who he said acknowledged the county “used to” maintain the fire lanes, to get them clear again. But, Schneiderman said, “there was a lot of shoulder-shrugging” and the parks commissioner “didn’t even seem to know where the fire lanes were.” In May, Schneiderman introduced a bill authorizing an agreement between the county and the fire district to allow firefighters to clear the fire lanes. The bill has not been acted upon by the legislature.
Tuesday’s community meeting starts at 7 p.m. at the Crohan Community Center, 655 Flanders Road.
Flanders wildfire mitigation plan
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