(emailed on August 28, 2024)

Hello supporters of the Chelan Butte,

In some ways a lot has happened since our last update, but in others not so much. As shown in the photo above, on August 20th parts of the Chelan Butte burned in a rapidly-moving wildfire, which was quite eventful locally (more on this below). However, over the summer nothing has changed in terms of Mr. Venugopal’s holding of an option to purchase the roughly 900 acres of property owned by Golden Gate Ventures.

In discussions with City of Chelan personnel, it appears that neither Mr. Venugopal nor Golden Gate Ventures has made any further inquiries to the City concerning possible development. Meanwhile, CBC has directly contacted Golden Gate Ventures to reiterate the community’s desire to preserve the Butte and our commitment to making this happen if given the opportunity. We have no idea why Mr. Venugopal continues to stand in the way of the preservation of the Butte, but we sincerely encourage him to do what is right for the local community and those who come to visit our beautiful valley.

As we updated you back in May, the Trust for Public Land (TPL) decided to terminate the Chelan Butte Acquisition Feasibility Study early because they felt it was not productive until 1) there was a willing seller (which is dependent on Mr. Venugopal), and 2) there was a willing owner who had stepped up. From our perspective, the completion of the Study would serve the purpose of providing information to a potential owner as to the responsibilities and costs associated with taking on ownership of open space land on the Butte. As such, we were disappointed with the termination of the Study.

Since the termination of the Study, we have requested and received the draft materials produced by TPL’s contractor. We are moving forward to put together our own version of the Study with the goal of summarizing various aspects of preservation of the Butte that would be of interest to a potential owner of land on the Butte including a) the public’s desires for the land, b) how a purchase of the land could be funded, c) the responsibilities of land ownership that would need to be carried out, and d) what the estimated costs of carrying out these responsibilities might be. We have contacted numerous entities that already own and/or manage open space land in Chelan and Okanogan Counties to gain the information needed for completion of this Study.

Since the Golden Gate Ventures properties are within City limits, we believe that the City of Chelan is the logical owner of open space land on the Butte and plan to present the Study findings to City personnel once it is completed. We will update you after we are able to do so.

Returning to the recent wildfire on the Butte, we would note that, in addition to all of the positive outcomes for the public that would result from preserving a large portion of property on the Butte, one other positive of not putting residential development up there is that future wildfires would not pose such a significant risk to members of the public that might otherwise be living there. Local residents know that the wildfire on August 20th was not unusual and that the Butte burns fairly frequently (there was also a small fire on the Butte this past 4th of July). The shrub-steppe and grass ground cover burns very rapidly in the summer, especially when winds are present. The August 20 fire grew thousands of acres in size in just a few hours. If not for the heroic efforts of firefighters dropping fire retardant from planes, houses in surrounding areas could have been lost, as they were in 2015 when the Reach Fire occurred.

This graphic (link) shows the areas burned by the August 20 fire (outlined in yellow) and from the 2015 Reach Fire (outlined in red) versus the location of the Golden Gate Ventures properties (outlined in blue). It is easy to argue that housing located within the Golden Gate Ventures property would be subject to a very high wildfire risk.

I’ll leave it here for now, but please do not hesitate to reach out to us by responding to this email if you have any questions or comments. Thanks as always for your interest and support.

Brian Patterson
Chelan Basin Conservancy President

on behalf of the CBC board:

Lisa Garvich – Vice President
Tony Crosetto – Treasurer
Mary Bider – Secretary