City of Atascadero 2025 Fuels Reduction Project
Summary
SCH Number
2025040690
Public Agency
City of Atascadero
Document Title
City of Atascadero 2025 Fuels Reduction Project
Document Type
NOE - Notice of Exemption
Received
Posted
4/14/2025
Document Description
This project involves vegetation management and wildfire mitigation activities across multiple sites, including the creation and maintenance of shaded fuel breaks, roadside brushing, and selective vegetation thinning. The primary goal is to reduce wildfire hazards and intensity, improve safety and access, and prevent overgrowth from encroaching onto roadways, while preserving the existing native tree canopy to provide shade.
The scope includes:
• The creation of multiple fuel breaks, selectively thinning vegetation to reduce fire intensity while maintaining the existing healthy native tree canopy to provide shade.
• Roadside vegetation clearance to improve visibility, safety, and access. Roadside brushing reduces fire hazards, prevents overgrown brush from encroaching onto roadways, and ensures clear vehicle sightlines. Work will be generally limited to the City's street rights-of-way in the attached location list, but minor encroachment into private properties may occur on a case-by-case basis if deemed necessary.
• Maintenance and modification of an existing 6.9-acre shaded fuel break as well as vegetation thinning to establish three additional shaded fuel breaks of 2.3 acres, 3.6 acres, and 6 acres in area. Shaded fuel breaks are a wildfire mitigation strategy that involves selectively thinning trees and vegetation to reduce fire intensity while maintaining enough tree canopy to provide shade. No work is proposed within or affecting a jurisdictional waterway proximate to the work area. If work needs to encroach, a new review will be completed at that time and any required permits will be obtained.
• Fuel reduction of approximately 35 acres from Sycamore Road to the ridge of Pine Mountain and a 1-acre treatment around a communications repeater site to enhance infrastructure protection. Roadside brushing activities conducted along Cemetery Road (0.75 miles), Serena Court (0.72 miles), and the Marj Mackey Trail (0.16 miles)
The scope of work does not include any soil excavation, new structures, or new roadway lanes. All work will be done with hand crews utilizing chainsaws and hand tools. All vegetation will be chipped in place utilizing track chippers, woodchips will be scattered, and tracks from track chipper vehicles will be raked.
Contact Information
Name
Sam Mountain
Agency Name
City of Atascadero
Job Title
Assistant Planner
Contact Types
Lead/Public Agency / Project Applicant / Parties Undertaking Project
Phone
Email
Location
Cities
Atascadero
Counties
San Luis Obispo
Regions
Citywide
Zip
93422
State Highways
HWY 41
Schools
Atascadero USD
Other Location Info
Work is being conducted in many small areas throughout the City under one larger project. See the attached document for more specific location details.
Notice of Exemption
Exempt Status
Categorical Exemption
Type, Section or Code
Class 4; Cal. Code Regs. § 15304
Reasons for Exemption
This project is consistent with the requirements stated in Section 15304 (Minor Alterations to Land) and will have no significant environmental impacts to aesthetics, agriculture and forestland/timberland, air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, geology and soils, greenhouse gas emissions, hazards and hazardous materials, hydrology and water quality, land use planning, mineral resources, noise, population and housing, public services, recreation, transportation/traffic, or to utilities and service systems. No healthy, mature native trees are proposed to be removed. No exceptions apply which would preclude the use of a Notice of Exemption for this project.
County Clerk
San Luis Obispo
Attachments
Notice of Exemption
Disclaimer: The Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation (LCI) accepts no responsibility for the content or accessibility of these documents. To obtain an attachment in a different format, please contact the lead agency at the contact information listed above. For more information, please visit LCI’s Accessibility Site.