Why RDCO Fire Bylaws Need to Prioritize Fuel Mitigation Over Air Quality
Updated: Oct 9
The Okanagan Valley has a smoke problem, but the most dangerous smoke may not be coming from well-managed local burning. It may be coming from the fuel we are leaving on the forest floor until the next wildfire turns it into weeks of smoke, evacuation alerts, property loss, and risk to life.
That is the core issue with fire prevention and air quality bylaws in the electoral areas of the Regional District of Central Okanagan. These bylaws were written for a different fire reality. At the time, the priority was understandable: reduce smoke, protect air quality, and limit nuisance burning.
Today, the greater threat is different. The forests around RDCO and neighbouring regional districts hold too much dry, dead, and accumulated fuel. When that material is not removed or safely burned under controlled conditions, it does not disappear. It waits.
A bylaw system that makes responsible burning nearly impossible may look protective on paper. In practice, it can block the very fuel mitigation work needed to reduce wildfire intensity near homes, roads, farms, and rural neighbourhoods.
The old priority no longer fits the current risk
Air quality matters. Smoke affects children, seniors, people with asthma, and anyone working outdoors. No serious discussion about burning should dismiss that.
The problem is that air quality has been treated as the controlling priority, while wildfire risk has grown into the more urgent public safety issue.
In the Okanagan, the question is not whether communities will deal with smoke. They already do. The real question is what kind of smoke they will face:
Shorter, planned smoke from controlled burning on suitable days
Prolonged, heavy smoke from large wildfires burning through unmanaged fuel
Emergency smoke that arrives with evacuation orders, structure loss, and dangerous firefighting conditions
The current approach often favours the first option so strongly that it increases the odds of the second and third. That is not balance. That is a misplaced priority.
Fuel mitigation is not a side issue. It is one of the few practical ways rural property owners, neighbourhoods, and local governments can reduce wildfire behaviour before an ignition happens. FireSmart work depends on removing combustible material from around structures and from nearby forested areas. If that material cannot be chipped, hauled, composted, or safely burned, the work stalls.
For many rural properties, burning is not about convenience. It is the only realistic way to deal with large volumes of woody debris after thinning, pruning, clearing deadfall, and cleaning up forest edges.
Venting rules are too narrow for real-world burning
RDCO burning rules rely heavily on the venting index. Under the current approach described in the public debate, burning requires a “good” venting day, meaning a venting index of 55 or higher.
On paper, that sounds reasonable. Better venting means smoke is more likely to disperse rather than sit in the valley bottom.
The issue is that the venting index does not tell the whole story.
A burn day is not safe or practical because of one number alone. Anyone doing responsible burning must also consider:
Wind speed and direction
Rain and recent moisture
Snow cover
Ground conditions
Temperature
Available help
Escape risk
Access to water and tools
Local fire danger ratings
Time of day
The venting index is set early in the morning. Conditions can change quickly. A day listed as “good” can become less suitable by 10 a.m., which is often when burning is advised to begin. A strict threshold can create a strange result: a day may meet the bylaw requirement at dawn, then fail in practical terms by the time a property owner can safely start.
There is also the issue of scarcity. Based on the situation described for 2025, there were only three good venting days from 1 October to the end of December. Two of those fell during the Christmas holiday period, when burning is likely a low priority for many households and contractors.
That leaves almost no workable window.
A bylaw that allows burning in theory but produces only a handful of usable days in a season is not a workable fuel mitigation tool. It becomes a barrier.
Fair venting days should be part of the solution
A practical change would be to allow burning on “fair” venting days, not only “good” ones.
A fair venting index sits between 34 and 54. If RDCO adjusted its rules to permit burning within that range, while still applying other safety controls, property owners would gain many more opportunities to complete fuel reduction work.
That does not mean open burning should happen anytime someone feels like lighting a match. It means the bylaw should consider the full set of conditions, not only one air dispersion measure.
A better system would treat fair venting as acceptable when other conditions support safe burning. For example:
Low wind or manageable wind direction
Adequate moisture in surrounding vegetation
Proper setbacks from structures and forest edges
Small, manageable pile sizes
On-site water and tools
A responsible adult present at all times
Burning limited to appropriate hours
No burning during fire bans or high-risk periods
This is how fuel mitigation and air quality can be balanced. The threshold should not be so strict that responsible burning becomes rare. It should be clear enough to prevent careless burning while flexible enough to let people do necessary work.
The phrase RDCO fire bylaws should not be associated with preventing FireSmart activity. They should support it.
FireSmart work creates debris that must go somewhere
FireSmart principles encourage people to reduce flammable material around homes and other structures. That includes cleaning gutters, moving firewood away from buildings, pruning lower branches, thinning dense trees, and removing dead woody debris.
Those steps are widely promoted for good reason. They can reduce the chance that embers ignite a home or that fire spreads rapidly through a property.
Yet FireSmart work creates a practical problem: piles of material.
Branches, needles, brush, small trees, deadfall, and slash need disposal. In some locations, chipping works well. In others, it is expensive, unavailable, or not suited to the volume or type of material. Hauling debris away can require trailers, trucks, fuel, labour, and disposal sites. Composting woody material can take too long and may leave fuel in place during the highest risk seasons.
For many rural landowners, carefully managed burning is the most realistic option.
If bylaws make that option too difficult, people face poor choices. They may leave debris stacked, which can create concentrated fuel. They may delay FireSmart work because they have no disposal path. Or they may move material to another part of the property, reducing risk in one area while increasing it elsewhere.
A bylaw should not punish the very behaviour communities are asking residents to adopt.
One-size rules can block good rural fire prevention
The Okanagan includes dense neighbourhoods, agricultural land, forested acreages, steep slopes, lakeside communities, and rural roads with limited access. A single set of restrictions can miss these differences.
One concern raised about the fire prevention bylaw is the land-size requirement, including the need to have a minimum area of land before certain burning approvals apply. Where a rule requires a property to be at least one hectare, or about 2.4 acres, it can exclude smaller rural parcels that still face serious wildfire exposure.
That matters because wildfire does not respect parcel size.
A half-acre property beside unmanaged forest can carry real risk. A small rural lot on a slope can collect needles, branches, and deadfall. A narrow property near a treed road can still need fuel reduction to keep access safer during an emergency.
Rules based only on parcel size may be easy to administer, but they do not always match fire behaviour, topography, or fuel load.
A stronger system would look at risk and readiness instead. If a property has legitimate fuel mitigation needs and can meet safety conditions, the process should allow a path to responsible burning.
Air quality protection cannot ignore wildfire smoke
The strongest argument against expanded open burning is simple: smoke is harmful and valley inversions can trap it.
That concern is valid. The Okanagan’s geography can make smoke linger. Poorly timed burning can affect neighbours and worsen local air quality. People with respiratory conditions can suffer even from short exposure.
But this argument has limits.
When bylaws suppress small, seasonal, controlled burning, they do not eliminate smoke. They may simply defer it to a wildfire, where smoke is uncontrolled, heavier, and longer lasting. Wildfire smoke can blanket entire valleys for days or weeks. It arrives with ash, road closures, anxiety, and emergency response costs.
The public discussion needs to compare real choices, not ideal ones.
The choice is not clean air versus smoke. In a fire-prone region with heavy fuel loads, the choice is more likely planned smoke under limits or unplanned smoke under crisis conditions.
That does not mean air quality rules should vanish. It means they should be redesigned around risk reduction.
A balanced bylaw could include:
More burn windows during fair venting when other weather factors are favourable
Clear limits on pile size and material type
Stronger enforcement against burning garbage, wet material, or prohibited items
Better public notice for planned burning periods
Separate rules for dense neighbourhoods and low-density rural areas
Faster approvals for FireSmart-related fuel mitigation
Training or guidance for property owners who burn
This approach protects air quality more honestly because it addresses the smoke source that matters most during bad fire years: excessive fuel.
Local government should make fuel reduction easier, not harder
There is a difference between careless open burning and targeted fuel mitigation.
Careless burning creates nuisance smoke, neighbour conflict, and escape risk. It deserves firm rules.
Targeted fuel mitigation is different. It removes the material that can carry fire into communities. It supports FireSmart goals. It helps create defensible space. It can reduce ladder fuels that allow fire to climb from the ground into tree crowns.
The bylaw system should clearly separate those two activities.
At minimum, RDCO and adjacent regional districts should review whether current rules are achieving the right outcome. The review should ask practical questions:
How many actual burn days are available in a typical fall or winter season?
How often do “good” venting days align with safe wind, moisture, and staffing conditions?
How much FireSmart debris remains unburned because approvals are too limited?
Are smaller rural parcels being blocked even when risk is high?
Can fair venting days be used safely under tighter operating requirements?
Are smoke complaints being weighed against the long-term smoke burden from wildfires?
These questions matter because landowners cannot reduce fuel with slogans. They need workable rules, enough legal burn windows, and clear expectations.
A better bylaw would balance health and safety
The solution is not unlimited burning. The solution is a smarter priority order.
Wildfire risk should sit at the centre of the bylaw, with air quality managed through timing, limits, and enforcement. That would reflect the Okanagan’s current reality.
A better approach could include three basic principles.
Fuel mitigation should be recognized as a public safety activity.
When burning is tied to FireSmart work, forest thinning, or defensible space, the bylaw should treat it differently from casual yard waste burning.
Venting should be one factor, not the only gatekeeper.
A fair venting day with low wind, moist ground, and proper controls may be safer and more useful than a good venting day with poor practical conditions.
Rules should reflect local risk.
Parcel size, slope, forest proximity, access roads, and fuel load all matter. Bylaws that ignore those factors may be simpler, but they are not necessarily safer.
The priority must change before the next major fire
RDCO’s fire and air quality bylaws were built around a real concern, but the risk profile has changed. Smoke from open burning still matters, but excessive forest fuel now poses a larger and more urgent threat to communities in and around the Okanagan Valley.
A rigid requirement for only good venting days leaves too few chances to burn safely. If only a few days in a season qualify, and some fall during holidays or poor practical conditions, the system is not supporting fuel mitigation. It is delaying it.
Allowing controlled burning on fair venting days, under strict safety rules, would not solve every wildfire problem. It would give residents and land managers one more practical tool. It would also align bylaws with the FireSmart work people are being asked to do.
The Okanagan will deal with smoke either way. The better choice is to manage some of it carefully now, while reducing the fuel that can create far worse smoke later, usually during Tourist Season. A bylaw that blocks responsible fuel reduction is not protecting the valley. It is leaving the valley more exposed.
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