County marks completion of Community Wildfire Protection Plan; consultant urges homeowners to 'harden' properties

Sobeida Castro, Santa Cruz County’s emergency‑management director, introduced the county’s newly completed Community Wildfire Protection Plan on April 1 and said the plan represents coordinated work between fire professionals, local agencies and residents.

Consultant Dave Richards summarized outreach and content, saying the process included nearly 100 participants, stakeholder meetings in five target communities (Sonoita‑Elgin, Patagonia, Nogales, Rio Rico and Tubac) and detailed, place‑specific treatment plans. Richards said the final document includes approximately 150 pages of maps and recommendations and that the final EIS process added roughly 135 mitigation actions the project team committed to implement.

Richards stressed personal preparedness and property hardening. "Each individual homeowner in your county that lives in the urban wildland interface ... has to take action to harden their properties," he said, adding that in some wildfire scenarios "fire personnel will not deploy where there's a huge life safety risk to their firefighters." He recommended local use of Firewise and Ready, Set, Go tools, and noted the plan unlocks grant opportunities for communications and individual projects.

The presentation described avoidance measures taken in drafting the plan, including redesigning a tailings facility to avoid direct impacts to an endangered plant and memorializing voluntary groundwater and seep monitoring as enforceable commitments. Richards noted the plan includes dark‑sky lighting criteria, collocation of infrastructure to reduce impacts, and oversized wildlife crossings on the access road to reduce habitat fragmentation.

Board members asked how to move public outreach forward; Richards pointed to ready‑to‑share plan illustrations and communication materials that county staff can distribute on social media and in print to help homeowners implement recommended hardening measures.

Public commenter Ben Lomeli had earlier expressed support for the plan during the public‑comment period, praising it as "complete," "concise" and urging it remain a living document.