Katie Haven for a stronger Okanogan County

The fire season has reminded us once again of how vulnerable our county is. In the Pearl Hill and Cold Springs fires, approximately 414,000 acres and over 180 structures were burned. Wildfires are a natural part of our ecosystem, but with better planning and management we can expect better outcomes than we had this year or in the other bad years of this decade.

Okanogan County has a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) which is a requirement for government funding of wildfire disasters. It is on the county’s website: www.okanogandem.org/mhmp-cwpp-updates.  

Recently, the county became aware that they were out of compliance with their own plan, and it is now in the scheduling process — more than two years late on a seven-year-old plan. There were articles a couple of weeks ago announcing four county-wide public meetings, but no information on how to participate. 

The CWPP is actually a very comprehensive plan that involved input from many communities, stakeholders and agencies. What is telling is in Chapter 6, the final chapter that addresses Mitigation Recommendations and the tables of action items for safety and policy, fire prevention, education, mitigation, and infrastructure enhancements. Here you find the action item, priority, responsible organization, timeline, and 2013 status. Disappointingly, many of the action items in these first important mitigation categories have a 2013 status statement that says, “deleted action item due to insufficient funding and/or manpower.”

Wildfires are our biggest hazard. I want our county commissioners to lead and take care of where we live. The best thing we can do for our land and people is to limit the impact of fires. Our commissioners will soon begin work on the 2021 budget. Choosing not to spend money or manpower on our biggest threat is unimaginable. If your house were at risk, you would protect it. Our county commissioners should do the same thing for all of us — protect it; mitigate the risk.

I am voting for Katie Haven for county commissioner District 2. She will take on this significant threat and work with all of us to make our home and community a better place to live in.

Pat Leigh

Winthrop