Conclusion:
Wildfire will continue to affect source water quality resulting to increasing treatment, maintenance and operating costs. Therefore, forest and watershed managers and water suppliers have to be well informed about wildfire impacts so as to develop mitigation strategies to build resiliency to wildfire in water supply. Recommended strategies to be fully developed and implemented, they should collect substantial information about magnitude and timing of post-fire impacts. But the bottom line is that wildfire impacts should be incorporated into routine planning, protection and operations of forests watersheds and water sources.
Recommendations:
- Forest managers should ensure proper forest management practices through tree thinning by removing dry trees and branches which act as fuel to fires. They should also have post-wildfire mitigation strategies in place such that proper assessment and monitoring is conducted to minimize causes of forest fires, as well as, establishment of landscape emergency stabilization plans to reduce sediment and ash transport into open water sources. Additionally, forest restoration and rehabilitation on the burnt landscape should be done soon after forest fires to minimize pollutants that could be carried from the area.
- Watershed managers should introduce source water protection by having restriction to forests watershed having the water sources used for drinking water supply. This way anthropogenic activities that might cause forest fires are eliminated. Proper land management practices should be ensured through close monitoring of all human activities happening such as logging, mining and residential developments. Also, they should implement run-off control measures on the steep landscape such as stream channel erosion controls or using wood-straw mulch on burnt area that is being rehabilitated or restored.
- Water Providers should modify their designed treatment infrastructures into robust plants that are able to remove pollutants released by forest fires. There should be constant water quality monitoring to understand the key pollutant sources considering all burnt areas that could be exposing the pollutants to the water reservoirs. Highly optimized treatment processes with highly trained operators having knowledge about wildfire water quality impacts should be considered so as to meet drinking water quality standards during post-wildfire periods.