SRD Resilience Grant Wood Chips

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - At the regular SRD board meeting on April 26th (minutes), a couple of issues of interest to Cortes residents were discussed.

There were new developments in the story of SRD’s proposal to centralise rural fire hall administration; this was covered by Roy Hales on Monday.

The Board also discussed the “Community Resiliency Investment Grant” and its uses, specifically the provision of wood chipping service for properties with road access, and the local use of those wood chips.

Sean Koopman reported to the Board that SRD successfully applied for $300,000 under the Resiliency grant for this year:

So on November 23rd, 2022, this board passed a resolution authorizing the Regional District to apply for $300,000 for this grant.

While we haven’t officially received the grant yet, it is incoming soon, so it’s non-officially official. Part of the activities that the board approved were wood chipping for road accessible properties in electoral area A and D. What we started with this grant last year was putting out calls to community organizations for the wood chips that come from this grant — under the UBCM criteria that they be disposed of 100 metres from structures.

Although initially those wood chips were available only to community service organisations — not to individuals or businesses — the Board at the April 26th meeting voted to offer wood chips to any applicant willing to come and collect them from a central location. Delivery of wood chips, however, would still only be available to community organisations. Individuals would have to sign a waiver or agreement promising to dispose of them safely and according to those FireSmart guidelines.

The Surge Narrows Parents’ Association put in a request for wood chips to cover their playground, which was granted. Wood chips are stored and composting on Cortes in several locations; the composted matter will be available to farmers in two or three years. The Seniors’ Association is using the chipped wood for their trail maintenance; Linnaea Farm and the Dillon Creek Restoration project have also benefited.

Area B Director Mark Vonesch asked why Quadra and Cortes residents were not being offered the chipping service this year, despite SRD’s successful grant application.

Question — Quadra and Cortes were not not being offered this year. Is that just a matter of sort of like every other year?Different locations based on the budget you’re working with?

Sean Koopman explained that Quadra has gone over their budget for wood chipping in the last two years, and the situation on Cortes was complicated by SCCA’s plans for fire safety improvements at Manson’s Hall:

Quadra has gone over budget with this amount in the last two years. That’s a separate conversation. Cortes, the reason we didn’t go for it this year, is this grant can allow for $50,000 per electoral area.

And Fire Smart Renovations for community buildings is an eligible criteria. Mansons Hall has about $80,000 worth of project that they want to undertake. They received a grant for $25,000 for that. So talking with Tammy and the SCCA I said, I will max out the SRD’s 50,000 [from the Community Resiliency grant]. So if the SRD gets the grant — 50,000 from us, 25 from their grant — then that allows them to undertake those Fire Smart renovations to that important community building.

For Cortes, we aim to get back to the chipping next year. This was was a special one time thing in partnership with the SCCA.

It appears that SCCA has a major fire safety upgrade planned for Mansons Hall, similar to what’s already been done for the Gorge Hall but on a larger scale. In the meantime, it looks like Cortes residents may have access to those stored wood chips — by applying to SRD, filling out some forms, and doing their own pickup and delivery.