By Eric Betts, Staff Writer

A large group of Bastrop County residents, including many members of the Long Term Recovery Committee, gathered Jan. 9 in the commissioners’ courtroom for a review of the county’s recovery plan, the 42-page set of guidelines the commissioners adopted in September to guide the county’s efforts to restore and revitalize the area after the Bastrop County Complex Fires.

They started with what sounded like bad news.

County emergency management coordinator Mike Fisher told it to them frankly, calling the plan, “not up to date and current anymore.”

But “that’s a good thing,” Fisher assured the crowd, saying it’s an indicator of the progress that’s been made towards the recovery. He gave the example of portions of the plan that had been written up to help the county deal with large and small animals abandoned or separated from their owners since the fires.

“That work is pretty much done,” Fisher said.

Other work and the recovery plan, which Fisher has said from the beginning would be a fluid document, has been updated accordingly.

County engineer Ronnie Moore said he’s received plenty of comments and complaints about the speed of the debris cleanup work, but said the deliberate pace the county and its contractors were using was a function of the overwhelming amount of FEMA regulations they had to follow.

“People have been very creative about finding ways to cheat the federal government out of money,” Moore said. The county’s priority is to ensure that it follows all of FEMA’s procedures and regulations so that it can be sure of receiving its portion of funding from the agency, which is 75 percent of the costs of much of the cleanup. FEMA needs more than a rough count of how many trees were cut down and debris loads were picked up; they need photographs, GPS coordinates, completed paperwork and more to prove the work was done properly.

Moore also said that the county had 467 applicants to its private property debris program, with close to 200 of those already taken care of. Moore said they expect 500 to 600 applicants before the PPDR closes.

Roxanne Hernandez, administrator of the Lost Pines Habitat Conservation Plan, encouraged fire-affected landowners to come by the LPHCP office at 901 Pecan St. and pick up one of their fire card decks, filled with best management practices for stewardship of land. The cards are offered free of charge.

Hernandez said that without human intervention, the area’s pine-dominated ecosystem would likely become an oak-dominated one, because oaks can regenerate themselves more rapidly than pines. They aren’t the only ones who would benefit.

“Invasive species are going to capitalize,” Hernandez said. Among the potential interlopers: red imported fire ants, which thrive in areas without cover and could prove deadly to the developing young of the endangered Houston toad.

Commissioner precinct 2 Clara Beckett said the county’s crews were working to identify the unmet needs still remaining as part of the cleanup effort, particularly items FEMA won’t be reimbursing as part of its 75 percent. The county has already bid out a contract to clear the county’s right of way of the stumps that remain after the clearing of trees, and Beckett said they’ll likely attempt to reseed the county right of way afterwards.

“Reseeding those rights of way (on Texas 71 and 21) seemed to give people encouragement,” Beckett said.

Other needs will have to wait. The county won’t be able to address any pavement issues created by the fire, firefighting apparatus or the heavy equipment used in cleanup until at least the spring, when the weather allows them to treat the pavement.

But the cost of all that work could add up for the county, and put a strain on a budget that’s already going to take a hit from the drop in property values. Beckett said the county was exploring avenues to get some of the work paid for, particularly its quarter share of the cleanup costs.

“It’s rare that the state doesn’t pick up the 25 percent match,” Beckett said. “We’re going to follow that through with the state.”

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