Chipper program chops up risky brush around homes
Published in: San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, CA)
Date: 8/4/2007
By: Joe Nelson
A city worker clad in a fluorescent yellow vest and orange helmet grabbed logs and branches stacked 4-feet high outside a home on Starvation Flats Road and fed them into a roaring Vermeer wood chipper.
The chipper spat ground mulch into the cavernous green bin of a chipper truck.
Resident Dave Horn stood in his driveway and watched the work in progress on, then ambled into his backyard and started hauling cut branches to the curb.
“I think it’s a great deal,” said Horn, 66, of the city’s new curbside chipper program that gathers people’s tree waste, grounds it to mulch and then hauls it away.
He said the program serves other benefits besides reducing the threat of wildfire spread.
“It keeps the critters out of the wood piles,” Horn said.
Launched in May with a $110,000 grant, the citywide chipper program, a partnership between the city and its Fire Department, is aimed at promoting defensible space around homes and thinning out stands of water-starved trees.
The chipper and truck make rounds to six areas of the city, spending two weeks chipping in each area before moving on to the next.
Residents can go to the city’s Web site, www.bigbearlake.com, for a map of the areas and the chipping schedule.
An information phone line has been established at (909) 752-2805. Reader boards have been displayed on Highway 18/Big Bear Boulevard in the Boulder Bay area posting the phone number, said Cheri Haggerty, city spokeswoman.
Last year, during a limited pilot program, about 150 tons of branches and logs were mulched. Under the citywide program, the city expects to ground nearly three times that.
“We’re anticipating somewhere in the range of 400 tons,” said David Lawrence, the city’s public works director.
He said residents have called the city requesting the mulch to use to cover the ground outside their homes for dust and weed-control purposes.
“We have a list of about a dozen people who want (mulch),” Lawrence said.
The mulch is taken to a city yard. From there, it either gets used by residents or the city. Officials may even consider a green waste composting facility, but as of yet there are no plans, Lawrence said.
No rootballs, limbs or tree trunks larger than eight inches in diameter are eligible for chipping.
Also off limits: construction lumber, branches, trunks, limbs or vegetation from new construction sites, as well as bagged material, pine needles, weeds, leaves, pine cones or loose bark.
Last year, Brad and Marjorie Ormsby, who live in Westlake Village but have owned a vacation cabin in Moonridge for seven years, were notified by the city of the then pilot program and thought it was too good to be true.
“My wife and I jumped on the chance to remove brush without having to haul it away for disposal … plus it sounded like fun,” Brad Ormsby said in a letter dated July 25 to the City Council.
He went on to say he and his wife rented a chainsaw and felled five trees and removed brush.
Ormsby said the chipping program is “vital to the future of Big Bear Lake and neighboring communities.”
“We would certainly not want the issues that the Lake Tahoe communities have and are experiencing,” he said.
Ormsby was referring to the Angora Wildland Fire in South Lake Tahoe that started June 24 from an illegal campfire and burned more than 3,000 acres. The fire was finally declared 100 percent contained on July 6.
Big Bear Lake workers are turning over logs too big for the chipper to the sheriff’s station, where they are cut up with chainsaws and a wood splitter and provided to primarily low-income residents for firewood at a cost of between $60 and $100 per cord.
“Given that the current market rate for cords is generally between $145 and $225, you can definitely see the savings those families would receive as a result,” Haggerty said.
As to how the chipping program will be funded in the future remains to be seen. Staff plans to go before the City Council at a later date when the program becomes better defined.
Grants and refuse fees are among the possible funding options, Lawrence said.