The Soldotna City Council accepted grant funds from the Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry and Fire Protection and appropriating $200,000 for spruce bark beetle mitigation and hazard fuel reduction. The grant funds will be used to remove hazardous trees at Centennial Park, Swiftwater Park, Soldotna Airport and the West Redoubt property, the city’s four largest landholdings.
“This will allow us to continue reducing and mitigating the fire risk hazard from those dead trees,” according to Soldotna City Manager Stephanie Queen. “It’s probably not going to be enough to deal with the problem, but we will continue to chip away at it in terms of moving from highest priority down. This certainly will put these funds to good use.”
The work is anticipated to begin this fall and continue through spring of 2023 with a deadline for completion of July 1, 2023.
“Parker Park is not included within the scope of this grant, but I have heard comments and questions from folks about Parker Park,” added Queen. “I mentioned that to our maintenance manager and Andrew Carmichael (Parks and Recreation Director) and asked that they continue to think up a strategy for dealing with the trees at Parker Park. Some of those will be on our city property and then some of them will be on adjacent private parcels, but we’ll come up with a strategy in trying to identify some scope for that because it would not fall within this scope of work that this grant would fund.”
Each listed site has a unique treatment plan that was developed by the City of Soldotna’s consulting forester and is consistent with the City and Borough adopted Community Wildfire Protection Plan.
Last year, Soldotna received $165,172 in State Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds for similar purposes. They are provided for limited hazard tree removal at sites including Centennial, Swiftwater, the Aspen Street Dog Park, and Memorial Park.