Vivid memories of the recent brushfire that threatened homes in Still River drew about 20 people to Monday’s meeting of the Board of Selectmen. Most came from Still River, but at least two came from Bolton. At several points during the meeting, it was clear that some audience members were far from satisfied with the answers offered by Libby Herland of the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Shortly after the fire burned nine acres of the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge last December, Fire Chief Rick Sicard wrote on behalf of the town to Herland, who is the refuge manager for eastern Massachusetts. He urged the service to mow more often at the refuge, maintain a firebreak around the land, and keep up the dirt “tank road” and the boat ramp so that they are usable by the fire department.
This week Herland and Deputy Project Leader Tom Eagle came to the Board of Selectmen’s meeting to respond to the letter in person.
Still River Road resident Fred Hinchliffe asked if residents would be able to question Herland after her presentation. When Chairwoman Marie Sobalvarro turned down that possibility, Hinchliffe said his main concern was to hear specific proposals on fire prevention.
Questions about the mowing schedule
Herland told the meeting that longterm plans for the Watt land were not yet final, but the parcel would have to fit within a larger scheme of wildlife habitat conservation. The land might be kept as grassland or allowed to revert to forest, depending on habitat needs.
Currently, she said, some of the Watt land is being mowed on a two- or three-year rotation. The land had been mowed twice in 2012, she told the board. It was scheduled for mowing last October or November, she said. But Fish and Wildlife was unable to do so because the federal government shutdown occurred just then. The service intends to mow all fields at the refuge in 2014.
Herland: ‘Not a normal occurence’
“There is no reason to think that these houses are at higher risk because of the management we are doing,” Herland said. She said the dry conditions last year and the electric wire hitting the tree were “not a normal occurrence.”
Herland emphasized that fire risk is relatively low here compared to the West–a statement that provoked rumbles of skepticism from the audience.
“I’m not hearing anything has changed to make residents safer in Still River,” Selectman Ron Ricci said.
“That [grass] is not a fuel type that is going to burn–” Herland began.
“It did! It did burn!” several in the audience called out.
“–that is going to burn into the woods and set all those trees on fire,” Herland completed her sentence.
Selectman Leo Blair said he had a photograph that showed the flames well above the 35-foot roof of a house. “That was a hell of a fire,” he said. He asked what protocol they could put in place, even before the full fire management plan was complete, to improve protection for abutters.
Importance of firebreaks
Deputy Project Leader Tom Eagle noted that grass fires stop, as this one did, when they hit mowed lawns. He stressed the importance of “defendable space” around houses–space that does not include combustible materials such as woodpiles, hay bales, or shrubby growth. “If having an extra 50 feet [as a mowed buffer zone] will make people feel safer, we will consider that,” he said.
Several of the selectmen emphasized that volunteers could help with the mowing, as some Harvard residents used to do. Herland agreed that the service would either mow firebreaks annually or allow volunteers to do so.
“Baloney!” a Still River resident said audibly.
Herland said she really wanted to emphasize that it was not necessary to mow all the fields to reduce the fire risk. As she had said earlier, the fields are not mowed in the summer because nestling birds would be killed. Fall mowing is done as late as possible to leave late flowers as food for pollinators such as bees and buterflies.
At the end of Herland’s presentation, Bill Ashe of Myrick Lane asked to be allowed to speak. Ashe was a moving spirit in the establishment of the Oxbow Refuge and is a former official at the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as a former selectman in Harvard. Ashe asked for the courtesy of speaking as a former selectman. But Sobalvarro said that, as others had not been allowed to speak, neither could he.
A role for National Grid?
Ashe later told the Press that he had been partly concerned to correct a misimpression that the Fish and Wildlife Service had broken promises that were made in return for a land donation. He said, as Herland had also noted, that the Watt land and nearby parcels were purchased by Fish and Wildlife for $3.1 million in 2001, not donated as some reports had stated.
Ashe said that the town should follow up with National Grid, whose sparking wires set off the blaze at Still River.
Selectwoman Lucy Wallace had also raised a question about National Grid’s role. During the selecmen’s meeting, she pointed out that the electric line was unshielded and asked Sicard what he had learned from the electric company about the problem.
Unshielded wire a surprise
Sicard said National Grid had not gotten back to him but had told him unshielded wires were common in the state. National Grid also said, according to Sicard, that shielded wire was cost-prohibitive. The important thing, he said, is to keep trees away from the wires.
But Stow Road resident Chris Roy, in an earlier interview, told the Press that he was surprised to see so much unshielded wire in a heavily treed community like Harvard. Roy, who formerly worked for N-Star and is currently engineering and operations manager for Concord Municipal Light, said the bare aluminum wire is “easy to put up and fix, cheap to buy.” But when such wire comes in contact with a tree, especially a wet one, it immediately finds a path to ground. He said that a shielded or tree-resistant wire, which has a rubber jacket, can also start a fire, “but it takes longer.”
