RES 2026023 - Laserfiche WebLink

Sequoia Ecological Consulting, Inc. CalVTP Project-Specific Analysis and Addendum Augustin Bernal Community Park Fuel Reduction November 2025 2-1 2.0 PROJECT DESCRIPTION The proposed project would create and maintain a 162-acre reduced fuel zone in the San Francisco East Bay within and adjacent to Augustin Bernal Community Park, located in the high fire hazard severity zone on Pleasanton Ridge in Alameda County, California (Figures 1 and 2). The Project would be implemented on land owned and/or managed by the City, Golden Eagle Estates, and East Bay Regional Park District at elevations between approximately 600 feet and 1620 feet. The Project is within Augustin Bernal Community Park, adjacent to the unincorporated community of Kilkare Woods, and the neighborhoods of Golden Eagle Estates and The Club at Castlewood. The Project starts southwest of the City of Pleasanton, Alameda County, from the start of Long View Tr ail between Longview Drive and Longview Lane, extending southeast to the Golden Eagle Trail entrance off Golden Eagle Way, adjacent to Castlewood Country Club, then expanding west to the top of Pleasanton Ridge. A small section of the western portion of the Project is within the East Bay Regional Park District ’s Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park. While the project footprint includes 69.5 acres of land mapped as treatable landscape by the CalVTP, it also includes 92.5 acres not included in the CalVTP treatable landscape (Figure 3). Treatment types and treatment activities would be consistent throughout the project footprint regardless of whether it has been mapped as treatable landscape. Treatment types and activities would be contingent upon site conditions, accessibility, and fuels management needs to achieve the shaded fuel break. This project proposes two treatment types consistent with the CalVTP PEIR: fuel breaks and WUI fuel reduction. The Project’s proposed treatment activities would be consistent with those described in the CalVTP PEIR: manual treatment, mechanical treatment, prescribed burning (broadcast and pile), prescribed herbivory, and herbicide (spot treatment). The project footprint and surrounding area have a wildfire hazard risk that is considered by CAL FIRE to be “high” to “very high.” Wildfire hazard risk is attributed to widespread invasive, noxious, fire-hazardous vegetation; decades of dead vegetation accumulation; over a century of fire suppression; and the increased risk of anthropogenic ignition associated with dense urban development (CAL FIRE 2023). The desired result of the Project is to restore fuel loads to more natural levels that can be maintained through prescribed fire and other methods. The Project would reduce excess and ladder fuels within an approximately 200-foot-wide shaded fuel break and WUI, creating safer fire road access for first responders and community members. The Project follows a route throughout the landscape that supports a strategic approach to wildfires in the WUI. Project implementation would not stop fire spread during periods of strong, warm, downslope winds with low relative humidity (i.e., Foehn winds), when pieces of burning material can be blown across fuel breaks. However, the Project would provide safer access and a point from which firefighting resources can “anchor” to conduct suppression activities, and it would increase the construction rate of fire lines while