Yuba Water Agency commits $6.5 million to forest restoration projects

Appeal Staff Report, Appeal-Democrat, Marysville, Calif.
·3 min read

Feb. 17—Yuba Water Agency recently committed $6.5 million to two projects meant to reduce the risk of wildfires and advance landscape-scale forest restoration in the Yuba River watershed.

The projects that will receive funding are part of an effort by the North Yuba Forest Partnership, which is a group of nine organizations working to plan, finance and implement forest restoration across 275,000 acres of private and public land spanning Sierra and Yuba counties and two national forests.

"The momentum of the North Yuba Forest Partnership is a model for restoration in California and the western United States," said Randy Fletcher, board director for Yuba Water, in a press release. "This partnership has a proven track record of success and has done a tremendous job at showing what's possible. We're proud to be a big part of that."

Participating organizations in the effort include the Blue Forest Conservation, Yuba Water, Camptonville Community Partnership, National Forest Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, Nevada City Rancheria, Sierra County, South Yuba River Citizens League and the Tahoe National Forest.

Of the dedicated funding, $6 million will be used as a cost-share contribution over the next 10 years, or $600,000 annually, for a Forest Resilience Bond meant to advance restoration treatments on nearly 23,000 acres for two projects previously planned by the Tahoe National Forest in Yuba and Sierra counties.

The bond will be used to attract additional capital from public and private investors to initiate restoration at a much faster pace and scale. The new bond is expected to leverage about $25 million in total funding, in addition to leveraging state and federal grants. In the past, the project leveraged $1.5 million in cost-share from Yuba Water to secure $4 million in private capital to finance restoration conducted across 15,000 acres of national forest.

The rest of the dedicated funding ($500,000) will be used to complete environmental documents and permitting for the wider North Yuba Forest Partnership area and field surveys for the first 20,000 acres of treatment. The grant fills the final funding gap for the project, which already secured $2.53 million for the effort.

"The North Yuba Forest Partnership is advancing restoration across hundreds of thousands of acres, a pace and scale significantly larger than the typical project area of 15,000 to 20,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada," said Melinda Booth, executive director of SYRCL, in a press release. "This planning effort for the entire watershed is creating a roadmap for prioritizing and carrying out work of this magnitude in the future."

The partnership's shared-stewardship approach prioritizes reducing catastrophic wildfire risk for people and property and focuses on treating areas that have the potential to prevent a wildfire from spreading to higher-risk areas, Booth said.

Yuba Water stated the financial contributions were important due to the long-term benefits for Yuba County's water quality and quantity, watershed health, air quality and the economy.