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SMAC warns database gaps and heavy workload are straining smoke program; seeks dedicated compliance role
Summary
Stacy McCarter told the Smoke Management Advisory Committee that reconciling burn records and auditing tonnage is consuming 30–60% of her time in busy months and recommended hiring a dedicated compliance/database administrator and adding automation to the smoke management system.
Stacy McCarter, mitigation program manager and secretary to the Smoke Management Advisory Committee, gave a detailed account of how the program verifies prescribed‑burn reports and the resulting workload strain on staff. She said the loss of the federal FastTracks interoperability and inconsistent naming across systems have made it time‑consuming to match planned and accomplished burns: "To make sure the rules are being followed, it's about 30 to 60% of my time during those months," she said.
McCarter described the current verification workflow: daily checks of forecast calls, cross‑referencing posted registrations, matching acres and tonnage with forecasters, querying quarterly/biannual federal and state reports, and conducting field audits on a sampling basis (roughly 1% in level‑1 areas). She gave a concrete example of the workload: of 340 planned federal burns in 2025, about 220 were marked accomplished in the system leaving roughly 120 records to reconcile, each requiring outreach to local burners or dispatch centers.
The committee discussed interim fixes and longer‑term solutions. Several members urged more user profiles for federal partners so responsibility for accomplishment reporting can be decentralized; Trevor Miller and James Dickinson noted gaps are often due to single points of contact at the unit level. McCarter recommended adding a funded, full‑time position to maintain the database, manage user IDs and passwords, coordinate IT testing, help with audits and complaint management, and provide rule‑review support.
Committee members explored alternatives to a full hire, including temporary data‑entry support, expanded partner contracts and targeted automation. McCarter said the new database ODF IT has been asked to build should include simple automation—like a next‑day email prompting burners to confirm whether they accomplished the burn—which would cut hours of manual follow‑up. "If the system somehow sent an email to whoever logged in to burn the next day and say, did you accomplish this? Click a little box, and then this it just does it for them would be—you know, it would just cut out a lot of work," she told the group.
Next steps: SMAC asked Stacy to confirm IT user‑costs and password policies, to engage federal partners on profile needs, and to include automation features in the planned database rebuild. The committee also recommended including a cost/benefit analysis for adding a compliance position as part of the forthcoming rule and budget discussions.
