Smoke study reports health impacts a year later

SEELEY LAKE - The Seeley Lake Community Council hosted presentations on a local wildfire smoke study, wildfire preparedness and the Seeley Lake Water District at their Feb. 11 meeting. In other business, Acting Seeley Lake District Ranger Quinn Carver introduced himself to those in attendance. The Council is still waiting for a reply from the Montana Department of Transportation about their request for lit speed signs.

University of Montana researcher Chris Migliaccio presented data from the wildfire smoke study that looked into the impacts on residents of Seeley Lake from the high levels of smoke during the Rice Ridge Fire. As the fire burned more than 150 thousand acres it filled the valley with smoke daily.

The Environmental Protection Agency issues warnings for sensitive groups when particulate levels reach 35 micrograms per cubic meter. The monitoring station located in Seeley Lake recorded 50 days with more than 200 micrograms per cubic meter of particulate mater. Nine of those 50 days the monitoring station was maxed out with the level at over 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter.

The wildfire smoke study was done in October 2017, right after the smoke exposure. Nearly 100 people from the valley had their blood pressure, heart rate and lung function screened along with various other tests. Around a third of the sample group returned for testing in 2018.

The average age of the study participants was 63. While some of the people in the study were evacuated, the average evacuation was only one week and a number of those people didn’t leave the valley.

Migliaccio said they found poor lung function directly after the fire as everyone expected. What they found that surprised Migliaccio was the impact a year later.

Of the people who returned for testing in 2018, nearly twice as many had abnormally low lung functions a year later as they did directly after the fire. Around 90 percent of the people showed a decrease in lung function a year later with only a few showing an increase.

Another anomaly was that men dropped an average of nine percent of their lung function while women averaged a four percent drop. Migliaccio said one theory to explain this was that men were more active during the fire. However, the study didn’t have any questions aimed at capturing activity levels.

Migliaccio said they currently have funding to do one more year of testing. He has already applied for more grants to cover additional years of testing to see what the long-term impacts are.

Missoula County Wildfire Preparedness Coordinator Max Rebholz explained that his job is to work with communities around the county to make sure they are adapted to wildfires, listen to communities values and interests, work to adjust barriers to fuel mitigation and work to ensure public safety. Rebholz is part of the recently formed community preparedness team.

One of the team’s goals for this summer is to do more home risk assessments in hopes of increasing the homeowner awareness. They hope to identify people who are interested in working within their neighborhoods to identify fuel mitigation work and how to get that work done.

Rebholz showed photos of homes in the Camp Fire last summer in California. In some of the photos, homes were burned but large green trees remained right next to them. This indicates that the fire was not a high intensity flame front but that blowing embers ignited the homes. Other photos showed homes that were still standing but the nearby landscape showed a high intensity fire had passed by the houses.

Rebholz explained that the photos show the importance of practicing fuel mitigation in the 100-foot area around their homes called the Home Ignition Zone.

The team wants to create a local ambassador program where local people can advocate getting fuel mitigation work done in their neighborhoods. The team is applying for grants so they can provide mini grants that could be used to pay contractors to do the work on a neighborhood sized scale. Neighborhood level protection plans could also be developed to identify evacuation routes and additional areas that need to be mitigated.

On May 4, Wildfire Preparedness Day, the team plans to hold an event in Seeley Lake with multiple booths set up around town for people to get information on fuel mitigation. In addition they will be working to set up volunteers to help people do the work including removing debris from people’s property to be burned offsite.

More information on the Wildfire Preparedness Day event will be available as plans solidify.

Seeley Lake Water District Manager Vince Chappell presented information on the District.

Chappell said the water treatment system is very high tech for a town the size of Seeley Lake.

In 2009 the plant was upgraded to bring water storage capacity up to 750,000 gallons, install ultraviolet light treatment and 16-inch main lines were installed into town. This added capacity and fixed low-pressure issues in the District including bringing fire hydrants up to required flow rates.

The water plant can produce upwards of 890,000 gallons of treated water per day. Currently Seeley Lake uses between 400,000 and 600,000 gallons per day in the summer and around 140,000 gallons per day in the winter.

The District has 580 active customers and 118 lots that have access to water but are not currently using it. Approximately 150 of the active users are seasonal. Of the 118 lots with access to the water system, Chappell said 31 of those have various issues preventing them from having septic systems.

The District has water rights for 350 acre-feet per year. Last year the district used 210 acre-feet of water leaving plenty to serve the undeveloped lots in the future. In the exceptionally dry year of 2007 the district used 275 acre-feet of water.

Chappell said water rights will be a limiting factor for development sometime in the future. The District cannot simply apply for more water rights. However, existing private water rights could be bought by developers and donated to the District.

One way the District has allowed for some development happened as an indirect result of the 2009 upgrades. When the upgrades were done the debt service on each lot with access to the water mains, whether they are active customers or not, went from $14.77 to $32.72.

Several people in the District that owned side-by-side lots, especially those with unbuildable lots next to their houses, combined their taxes in such a way to eliminate the debt service on one of their two lots. To date, approximately 30 lots have been combined.

To recover the lost debt service payments the water district has made those hookups available for other development such as the Alpine Trails Subdivision on the north end of town east of the Veterans’ Memorial.

The district will evaluate each future development’s water needs and assess if the development can be served by the available water rights.

Chappell encourages anyone who wants to learn more about the system to visit him at the Water District. He loves giving tours of the facility.

The next Council meeting is scheduled for March 11 at the Seeley Lake Historical Museum and Visitor’s Center, 2920 Highway 83. An informal gathering with pizza and water starts at 5:30 p.m. followed by the meeting at 6 p.m.