The kickoff meeting for the 2023 Nederland Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) update was held at the Nederland Community Center on July 31. The meeting was moderated by Kirin Riddell from the Boulder Watershed Collective (BWC) with participants from the Town of Nederland, the Nederland and Timberline fire districts, Boulder County government and the Ember Alliance.

BWC (boulderwatershedcollective.com) has been contracted to facilitate the collection and dissemination of information regarding updates to the 2011 CWPP which includes the Town of Nederland and the areas encompassed by the two fire districts. Funding for this project came from a grant by Wonder Labs’ Reimagining 2025: Living with Fire Design Challenge. The plan is expected to be finished by May of 2024.

Kenzie Hartt from Ember Alliance (emberalliance.org) started the meeting by explaining the fundamentals of a CWPP and the types of risk modeling and processes involved in producing a usable plan. Risk modeling includes fire behavior, home exposure, road safety, and evacuation.

Erin Fried from BWC outlined how the process of updating the CWPP will work. The process will be a series of meetings and surveys with residents and community organizations over the next six months with the objective of identifying ways to increase resiliency in the area regarding wildfires. The core component of the process will be engaging with residents to understand local concerns, values and priorities and consolidate them into actionable next steps. It is a bottom-up approach to planning. Next steps could be local neighborhood defensible space actions, treatment plans for public lands or reducing structure ignitability by modifications to existing homes. Fried emphasized that the process relies on the engagement of the community and their active involvement in reimagining living in a changing Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) landscape.

Boulder County Senior Planner for Forest Health, Meg Halford, finished the presentations by describing how the Nederland CWPP fits into the countywide CWPP and the county resources available to help with the development of the local CWPP. Boulder County is planning an open house on October 7 from 9 - 11 a.m. at the Nederland Community Center to discuss and get feedback from residents on these CWPP update efforts. The search term for the county CWPP survey is “Boulder County CWPP 2023 survey.”

The meeting finished with questions from the in-person and virtual audience. The next step in the process will be the formation of a Community Wildfire Council with representation from all the neighborhoods and local demographics including youth. Questions regarding the Nederland CWPP can be sent to Kirin Riddell at kirin@boulderwatershedcollective.org.

The story map about this CWPP can be viewed at arcg.is/aq00q.