SIERRA NEVADA CONSERVANCY AWARDS $1 MILLION GRANT TO PCWA FOR FOREST RESTORATION WORK

AUBURN, Calif. (July 16, 2021) — Placer County Water Agency (“PCWA”) announced that it has been awarded a $1 million grant by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (“SNC”) to help fund future implementation of the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project – a 28,000-acre, public-private project aimed at reducing the risk of catastrophic fire in the headwaters of the Middle Fork American River. Combined with matching funds from the French Meadows Partnership and timber sale revenues, the SNC grant will be used to restore nearly 500 acres of forest within the larger project area.

“The French Meadows Project is one of the cornerstones of the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative and the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program,” said Angela Avery, Executive Officer of the SNC, a state agency based in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Auburn, CA. “The use of a partnership approach to expand the capacity of the Forest Service to restore the National Forest at a landscape level has provided a model of successfully increasing pace and scale of forest restoration and has secured many millions of dollars of leveraged funding.”

Started in 2016, in response to the King Fire two years prior, the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project is led by an innovate partnership consisting of PCWA, Placer County, The Nature Conservancy, the United States Forest Service (Tahoe National Forest), American River Conservancy, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of California, Merced. In two seasons of implementation work, the partnership has treated 3,300 acres of federal and 1,100 of private land; brought in nearly 4.5 million board feet of lumber to a local mill, and more than 5000 tons of biomass to local renewable energy facilities; prepped more than 600 acres for prescribed burns; and employed more than 100 local contractors. The third season of work began in June.

On news of receiving the grant, PCWA Board Chairman Josh Alpine said, “We are thrilled and grateful for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy’s continued support of this project; we simply would not have experienced the success we have without it. In critically dry years like the one we are currently experiencing, there is an increased threat of catastrophic wildfire, and only with a shared sense of stewardship can we do the necessary work to protect our watersheds.”