Headwaters Fall 2021: The West's New Megafires

THE WEST’S NEW MEGAFIRES CAN COLORADO ADAPT TO DEFEND ITS WATER?

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Support WEco and Fresh Water News on Colorado Gives Day Mark your calendars for December 7 and Colorado Gives Day, where your contributions will help sustain Fresh Water News’ timely reporting on critical water issues. The Colorado Media Project selected Fresh Water News again this year as a participating newsroom for the #newsCOneeds campaign that applies your holiday giving to a funding match that doubles the impact of your gifts! Last year was our most successful yearend giving campaign to-date and we are excited to see how our community continues to support us this December! Thank you in advance for your support!

Pulse Can We Better Predict Runoff? New Hydrology Lab Will Help A new laboratory leading research near Crested Butte, Colo., is taking the first-ever mountain-focused, bedrock-toatmosphere look at climate and hydrology. The study should help water managers forecast runoff with greater accuracy.

11 Electric Costs Set to Surge as Lake Powell Struggles to Produce Hydropower Low levels at Powell mean reduced hydropower production, leading to increased costs for 5 million customers across the West.

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Inside DIRECTOR’S NOTE

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Contents | Fall 2021 THE WILDFIRE AND WATERSHEDS ISSUE Colorado’s wildfire season is a summer norm, but wildfires have grown more frequent, intense, large and destructive. The 20 largest recorded fires in the state’s history have all burned since 2000, with the three biggest ignited in 2020. After a burn, debris, chemicals and vulnerable soils can result in contaminated water and emergency flooding, debris flows and mudslides—all of which occurred after the 2020 fires. As Colorado’s communities and watersheds recover from the megafires of 2020, they’re learning, developing resources, and applying more resources than ever to forest health work. With wildfires projected to increase in the future, will Coloradans be better prepared to live with fire?

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WHAT WE’RE DOING

WEco's upcoming events, reporting and more.

5 FROM THE EDITOR

6 2021 PRESIDENT’S RECEPTION

7 AROUND THE STATE

Water news from across Colorado.

13 MEMBER’S CORNER

Celebrate the impact of WEco’s members.

Water After Wildfire

Those affected by the burns of 2020, Colorado’s worst wildfire season yet, have only begun to see the extent of water quality impacts that could continue for another five years or more. As communities and water managers hustle to stabilize slopes and treat debris-laden water, they’re getting better prepared for the next fire.

By Kelly Bastone

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How Do We Live With Megafire?

Wildfires are projected to intensify and burn larger areas over the coming decades, with the potential for significant impacts to water quality. So how do Coloradans learn to live more effectively with fire?

The answer may lie in working across boundaries and taking a shared stewardship approach to landscape-scale forest health and wildfire recovery.

By Jason Plautz

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How Megafires are Reshaping Forests

Between unprecedented wildfire and increased heat and drought due to climate change, forests are facing disturbances beyond the realm of recovery, leading to vegetative shifts that will affect future hydrology.

By Jason Plautz

31 Above: Firefighters clear debris around a water diversion structure in the White River National Forest as part of an effort to protect it from the Grizzly Creek Fire in 2020.

Courtesy City of Glenwood Springs On the cover: The 2020 Pine Gulch Fire, which burned north of Grand Junction, Colo., spread down drainages, near these ponds. Photo by Kyle Miller, Wyoming Hotshots, USFS, via National Interagency Fire Center H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 2 1

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DIRECTOR’S NOTE

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Jayla Poppleton Executive Director

Lisa Darling President

Jennie Geurts Director of Operations Sami Miller Membership and Engagement Officer

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ne of my family’s go-to mountain biking destinations is Buffalo Creek.

It’s 90 minutes southwest of Denver, and boasts abundant trails through beautiful ponderosa pine forest. Much of the region is unscathed by fire, but nearly 12,000 acres burned in 1996, 75% of which were considered “high-severity.” Stunning views come from riding through that burn area, but the forest remains far from regrown and likely forever changed.

For years my husband and I have hauled our kids out to that same forest to select our annual Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It’s a program the U.S. Forest Service offers to promote thinning. There are rules for how large a tree you can cut, but you get a permit for $20, bring your saw, tromp through the woods to find that beauty, drag it out, tie it on top of the car, and away you go, hopefully helping to prevent a future high-severity burn.

Even as programs like this are embraced, community support for mitigation efforts isn’t always there. I attended the Northwest Colorado Drought tour organized by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in August, and we visited a site at Pearl Lake State Park with a view of a hillslope heavily impacted by beetle kill, primed for future fire. We heard from Colorado State Forest Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff that they’d gotten pushback for thinning programs. The social license to cut down trees, especially live ones, was absent. But that’s changing. More and more people are connecting the dots between forests, fuels, fires and water.

DNR director Dan Gibbs spoke on site, saying, “We are at a breaking point.” He pointed to a number of initiatives the department is putting in place to accomplish “the right [preventative] work, in the right places, at the right scale.” But for those initiatives to be successful, community support will be paramount, he said.

Building social license is an important outcome of water education and outreach and our work at WEco. Next year, we’ll scale up efforts to reach the public about risks to water supplies through a year-long public awareness campaign called Water ’22.

We’ll be taking a page from Water 2012, which was a significant statewide, grassroots effort that touched 500,000 Coloradans.

Goals include raising awareness of how water supports our quality of life, challenges we face, and solutions, including individual actions that can help. Beyond fostering a stewardship ethic, we’ll engage more Coloradans to become active participants in Colorado’s water future via planning and decision making processes and community involvement.

There’s a saying among those who communicate about water, “Never waste a good drought.” While Water ’22 will capitalize on having people’s attention due to various crises erupting across the region—not least drought and wildfire—we’ll also set an optimistic tone. We invite individuals and organizations statewide to join us in this effort to build support for the work that is needed, and to call more Coloradans forward as water stewards.

—Executive Director—

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STAFF

Stephanie Scott Leadership Programs Manager Scott Williamson Education Programs Manager Cailyn Andrews K-12 Water Educator Liason Jerd Smith Fresh Water News Editor

Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr. Vice President Brian Werner Secretary Alan Matlosz Treasurer Perry Cabot Nick Colglazier Kerry Donovan Paul Fanning Jorge Figueroa Dulcinea Hanuschak Eric Hecox Matt Heimerich Julie Kallenberger

David LaFrance Caitlin Coleman Publications and Digital Dan Luecke Resources Managing Editor Kevin McBride Charles Chamberlin Karen McCormick Headwaters Graphic Peter Ortego Designer Kelly Romero-Heaney Elizabeth Schoder Don Shawcroft Laura Spann Chris Treese

THE MISSION of Water Education Colorado is to ensure Coloradans are informed on water issues and equipped to make decisions that guide our state to a sustainable water future. WEco is a non-advocacy organization committed to providing educational opportunities that consider diverse perspectives and facilitate dialogue in order to advance the conversation about water.

HEADWATERS magazine is published three times each year by Water Education Colorado. Its goals are to raise awareness of current water issues, and to provide opportunities for engagement and further learning.

THANK YOU to all who assisted in the development of this issue. Headwaters’ reputation for balance and accuracy in reporting is achieved through rigorous consultation with experts and an extensive peer review process, helping to make it Colorado’s leading publication on water. © Copyright 2021 by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education DBA Water Education Colorado. ISSN: 1546-0584

What we’re doing Water Fluency grads 2021!

This committed class inspired with their enthusiasm for digging into the content and asking the tough questions. The class of 35 received their certificates to “speak fluent water” in October and left motivated and better equipped to advance collaborative solutions for Colorado water.

Thank you to 2021 Water Fluency Program Title Sponsors Colorado Water Conservation Board, Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority, and Special District Association of Colorado for investing in this impactful program.

Congratulations Water Leaders!

Congratulations to our 2021 Water Leaders Program graduating class! We were privileged to spend four months working with this fine group, together with consultant Ashley Seeley of Excellence Advantage, to help them become more self-aware and skillful leaders. Now we send them off ready to continue tackling Colorado’s water challenges...and to achieve better outcomes and more fulfillment along the way!

Karlyn Armstrong Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Emily Meek American Water Works Association

Cole Bedford Colorado Water Conservation Board

Taylor Murphy City of Fountain

Stephanie Cecil Northern Water

Ian Philips Colorado River District

Hattie Johnson American Whitewater

Stephanie Phippen Tetra Tech

Katy Kaproth-Gerecht LRE Water

Warren Rider Rider Resources International, LLC

Ronda Lobato Costilla County Assessor

Lindsay Rogers Western Resource Advocates

Gregor MacGregor University of Colorado Law School

Steve Snyder Denver Water

Maura McGovern Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

Scott Steinbrecher Colorado Attorney General’s Office

Thank you to Molson Coors for providing valuable funding support as Title Sponsor for the 2021 program! We will begin accepting applications for the 2022 class in mid-November. Add your name to a notification list by visiting: watereducationcolorado.org/programs-events/water-leaders.

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The topics of fire, flood, and drought really require rapid responses … We want to get that helpful information out to help mitigate both pre- and postfire as quickly as possible. The more fires and the more natural disasters, the more calls and requests we get for assistance in terms of resources or desired research to be funded to help support decision making.

”

­—JULIE KALLENBERGER We spoke with Julie, a member of the WEco Board of Trustees and associate director of the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University, about wildfire and the many resources and programs available through CSU. Read it on the blog at watereducationcolorado.org.

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What we’re doing Water ’22: A Year of Public Awareness Hang on tight because Water ‘22 is ramping up!

Water ‘22 promises to be an expansive statewide project to raise public awareness around water and motivate more Coloradans to join the conversation about Colorado’s water future. Water ’22 will be modeled after the highly collaborative and successful Water 2012 campaign, when Gov. Hickenlooper issued a proclamation declaring 2012 the “Year of Water,” kicking off a year-long celebration.

We will be calling attention to some key water institutions and frameworks, including the 100th anniversary of the Colorado River Compact and the Colorado Water Plan update. We want to hear from you with your ideas for other important milestones and opportunities to connect this campaign with celebrations and events statewide.

Email Water22@wateredco.org to share your ideas or indicate your interest in getting involved!

Meet the newest members of the WEco team!

Cailyn Andrews K-12 Water Educator Liaison Cailyn will be working with WEco for one year through the AmeriCorps eeCorps (environmental education) program. In her role she will support K-12 educators by connecting them with opportunities for increased exposure to local water issues, leading teacher professional development trainings, guiding educators toward quality resources, and connecting K-12 educators with each other to collaborate.

Cailyn is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she studied Animal Sciences and Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences.

Esther Malers Communications and Media Intern Esther is supporting WEco during the 2021 fall semester, focusing on member communications and social media.

Esther is attending the University of Denver, pursuing a double major in English and Spanish with a minor in geography.

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FROM THE EDITOR

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s megafires occur more regularly, they’re growing more expensive to suppress and resulting in more costly damage to natural and built water systems. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, suppression costs spiked from an annual U.S. average of about $425 million from 1985-1999 to $1.9 billion per year over the past decade, reaching $2.4 billion annually over the past five years.

Agencies and officials are spending as much as they can, yet it may not be enough— resources are often too stretched to fully respond to every fire. And when considering post-fire impacts, the total costs of wildfire are simply enormous.

A 2018 report from Headwaters Economics found that suppression comprises only about 9% of total wildfire costs. The rest: indirect costs, many, which we’ve seen this year, relate to water as it runs over burn scars, into rivers and reservoirs. Those indirect costs, as we explore in “Water After Wildfire” (page 14), result from flooding, mudslides, contamination, and the work and accompanying pricetag of watershed cleanup and water infrastructure repairs and adaptations.

What’s more, according to the Headwaters Economics report, about half of the costs of wildfire are paid for locally. So it makes sense that fire preparedness work is happening locally. There are 46 place-based collaboratives working in different parts of Colorado, said Ch’aska Huayhuaca with the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, at an October 2021 Western Governors’ Association (WGA) workshop. Such groups aim to reduce risk through efforts such as establishing firebreaks or managing fuel buildup by thinning forests and using controlled burns, so that our fire-adapted forests don’t erupt into highly-destructive megafires. This can, when done strategically, stretch each dollar—with more up-front investment resulting in more manageable, less destructive burns.

A 2021 report, A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the F2F Program, focuses on the From Forests to Faucets program where Denver Water, the U.S. Forest Service and others have employed fuel treatments to protect drinking water sources. The report estimates that fuel treatments done between 2011-2019 throughout Denver Water’s north and south collection systems could have an estimated net benefit of up to $85 million—avoiding costs of as much as $234 million. Of course, the treatments, which the report estimates at $1,000 per acre, don’t pay off until a fire ignites.

As we explore in “How Do We Live With Megafire?” (page 19), work to prepare forested watersheds for wildfire is most effective at a landscape scale, making collaboratives that can reach across boundaries and landowners—public and private—an important organizing structure for collective impact. The next step might be scaling up and knitting collaboratives together into what some are calling “conglaboratives,” where each group is working independently to address local priorities and risk, while coordinating with nearby collaboratives to reach further.

The challenge of Western megafires is real, but Coloradans are sure to keep pushing the needle on what we can do together.

—Editor—

2021 President’s Reception In another year that has been steeped in uncertainty and the need to adapt, Water Education Colorado is proud to announce that our annual fundraiser and awards ceremony was a successful event that took place in a hybrid format! We had over 160 guests in person, with 30+ online joining us from around the state to celebrate Colorado water and our awardees as well as raise funds for our work. We are pleased to report that we exceeded our fundraising goal and our incredible community showed up for us yet again in such a big way. The evening was filled with fun and meaningful recognition. Thank you to our supportive community for making this event possible and for continuing to connect with and support our mission!

Thank you to our Tidal, Peak and Torrent Sponsors For Their Generous Support: TIDAL

PEAK

TORRENT

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2021 WEco Emerging Leader Award

Kelly Romero-Heaney

BY PAUL FANNING

2021 WEco Diane Hoppe Leadership Award

Michael Preston

BY PAUL FANNING Mike Preston’s journey to becoming one of Colorado’s great water leaders began in the 1980s when he worked as Associate Director of the Office of Community Services at Fort Lewis College. In this role, he served on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe negotiating team in the Colorado Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement, helping to secure the Tribe’s allocation of water from the Dolores Project, which brought clean water to Towaoc for the first time. Mike also served as Project Development Coordinator for the 7,600-acre Ute Mountain Farm and Ranch Enterprise, made feasible by the Water Rights Settlement.

In the decades since, Mike has served as general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District (now retired), invested 12 years as Chair of the Southwest Basin Roundtable, has been instrumental in the formation and operation of the Dolores Watershed Resilient Forest Collaborative, and serves on the Steering Committee of the Rocky Mountain Restoration Initiative. His passion for water resource and forest health issues is matched by his commitment to collaboration and communication as the most effective tools to achieve success in these complex, often contentious arenas.

Mike and his wife Jennifer spend their free time outdoors, including working on their small farm and ranch. They also embark on “every dimension of summer and winter activity” in the woods with their two sons, two grandsons and daughterin-law. With many musicians in the family, extended family jam sessions are a highlight whenever they gather.

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When a younger Kelly Romero-Heaney heard environmentalist David Brower deliver a “fire and brimstone speech” about protecting rivers in the Western United States, it ignited her passion to protect natural resources.

Kelly’s work in environmental and community relations included service as a hydrologic technician for the U.S. Forest Service in Routt County, then as Shell Oil’s community liaison officer in Steamboat Springs, where she engaged with stakeholders to promote effective impact mitigation strategies and transparent communication.

In 2014, Kelly accepted the position of Water Resources Manager for the City of Steamboat Springs, where she managed the city’s long-term water planning, source water protection, wastewater issues and more.

In 2019 Kelly teamed up with The Nature Conservancy to convene Yampa Basin stakeholders to launch the Yampa River Fund, a $4.8 million endowment that will support streamflow and riparian restoration and water infrastructure projects to benefit the environment, recreation and agriculture. Already the fund has supported streamflow releases from Stagecoach and Elkhead reservoirs, the planting of cottonwood forests along the Yampa, a whitewater recreation park in Craig, and improvements to a major agricultural diversion in Maybell.

In June 2021, Kelly took on a new role as assistant director for water policy at the Department of Natural Resources, where she will convene “some of the brightest minds and most dedicated professionals of natural resources management to create solutions to our water challenges.”

Outside of work, Kelly can be found engaged in one outdoor activity or another with husband Geovanny Romero and sons Luke and Nico.

2021 WEco Posthumous Diane Hoppe Leadership Award

John Porter

BY MICHAEL PRESTON John Porter’s relationships and diplomatic skills were instrumental in the completion of McPhee Reservoir and the Dolores Project and in crafting a settlement that resolved the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute Tribal claims on the rivers in Southwest Colorado.

Everything that John promised in his diplomacy and negotiations is now a reality. The Indian Water Rights claims are settled, the cloud is lifted off of the Mancos River, irrigated acreage in Montezuma and Dolores Counties has doubled, and the Ute Mountain Tribe has developed what is recognized as one of the most successful large-scale irrigated farms in the West.

In 1990, John joined the Southwestern Water Conservation District Board where he supported completion of the Animas-La Plata Project to bring finality to the Colorado Ute Water Rights Settlement.

John became President of the SWCD Board and initiated a grant program that has provided vital help to water oriented entities throughout Southwest Colorado.

John Porter’s legacy is an inspiration to us all. In addition to his many landmark accomplishments, John’s career has demonstrated the role that positive person-to-person relationships play in banding together to do good things. John was a good listener who treated every person and every idea with respect. John was able to take the thorniest issues and help us find the positive alignments to move us forward together. Those of us who have been touched by John can draw on his inspiration as we meet the challenges ahead.

Thank you also to our 2021 Cascade and Ripple Level Reception Sponsors: CASCADE

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Shreck Colorado River District Environmental Defense Fund Pueblo Water Southwestern Water Conservation District

RIPPLE

Applegate Group City of Thornton Dolores Water Conservancy District Family of John Porter Kogovsek & Associates

Mallon Lonnquist Morris & Watrous St. Vrain and Left Hand Water Conservancy District The Nature Conservancy United Water and Sanitation District Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District Vranesh and Raisch

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JOIN WECO AS A PULSE PARTNER Becoming a PULSE Partner of Water Education Colorado means not only supporting our on-the-ground work to create a vibrant, sustainable and water-aware Colorado—it means joining a community. Just as one drop of water doesn’t make up a river, our community is made up of many valuable supporters and members. We invite you to join WEco and provide foundational support for fact-based journalism, high-quality programs, and relevant publications and resources. wateredco.org/monthly-membership

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Find Program Details https://co-co.org

Pulse

These instruments will measure precipitation at the new Surface Atmospheric Integrated Laboratory, near Crested Butte, Colo.

Can We Better Predict Runoff?

New Hydrology Lab Will Help

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BY ALLEN BEST unoff prediction, if much improved, remains imperfect, as managers of the Taylor Park Dam in Colorado’s Gunnison County were reminded in 2018. It had been a warm winter, with rain falling around Christmas in Aspen, Vail and other ski towns.

Traditional forecasting tools like snow telemetry (SNOTEL) monitors left water managers unaware of how much water the warm storms had left in snowpack at higher elevations.

They were caught off guard when spring runoff nearly overtopped the dam. A warming, drying and more erratic climate escalates the need for better runoff prediction.

Research launched in September at the Rocky Mountain Bio-

Courtesy ARM User Facility

logical Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colo., may help managers make better decisions, not just in the Gunnison Basin but in mountainous regions across the West.

The $8 million Surface Atmospheric Integrated Laboratory, or SAIL, will deploy more than three dozen instruments to measure wind, rain, snow, solar radiation and the atmospheric particles called aerosols. It’s described as the world’s first bedrock-to-atmosphere mountain integrated field laboratory.

Scientists hope the mountains of data gathered through June 2023 will allow them to better understand the physical processes and interactions that affect hydrology in mountainous terrain. They want greater precision in answering how,

why, where and when rain and snow will fall but also how the water flows. Plus, they hope to better understand how dust, hot drought and other phenomena play into this. This will improve short-term models for streamflow prediction and ideas about how the warming climate will alter water supplies.

Radar positioned on the slopes of Crested Butte Mountain Resort will be a crucial tool at SAIL for allowing a better understanding of what is going on with the weather and water. It has a resolution five to 10 times greater than a typical weather radar. Kenneth Hurst Williams of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which leads the SAIL project, says this will provide a “fantastic opportunity” to

gain a sharpened understanding of the links between atmospheric and other processes that inform runoff volume.

Williams, the lead on-site researcher for Lawrence Berkeley, says availability of such a radar would have helped water managers in the Gunnison Basin better understand the high water content in the 2018 snowpack that threatened to overflow Taylor Park Dam. SAIL will build on what was learned in two prior and overlapping projects in the Gunnison Basin. Williams in 2014 launched a separate watershed-scale effort in the Gunnison Valley and earlier, in 2009, David Gochis and others at the National Center for Atmospheric Research assessed the value and impact of radar and other technologies. That work across multiple basins also involved working with the new airborne lidar technology that uses remote sensing to better estimate water volumes in snowpacks—but lidar cannot reflect changing conditions from day to day, let alone week to week.

“Different tools and different data sets are better for some things than others,” says Gochis.

“At the end of the day, there is much room for improvement in all of this. But it’s not ‘either or,’ it’s ‘and.’”

As for the value of all this, Gochis says it's easy. A 30% forecast error can be worth 60,000 to 80,000 acre-feet of water delivery to downstream users. “We’re talking about $30 million to $40 million pretty quickly,” he says. H Long-time Colorado journalist Allen Best publishes Big Pivots, an e-journal that covers energy, water and other transitions in the West.

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Pulse

Electric Costs Set to Surge as Lake Powell Struggles to Produce Hydropower

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BY JERD SMITH he federal agency that distributes electricity from hydropower plants in the Upper Colorado River Basin will ask its customers, including more than 50 in Colorado, to help offset rising costs linked to Lake Powell’s inability to produce as much power due to drought.

The Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), which distributes Lake Powell’s electricity, is asking its customers how best to cope with long-term drought conditions that have pushed Powell and other reservoirs to historic lows.

As Colorado River flows have declined due to climate change and a 20-year megadrought, there is less water in its reservoirs and, therefore, less pressure to power the turbines, causing them to generate less electricity.

“It’s all bad news, but it isn’t necessarily unexpected,” says WAPA spokesperson Lisa Meiman.

WAPA power is among the most sought-after in Western states because it is sold at cost and because it is a renewable power resource, something highly valued as utilities work to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

WAPA often buys extra power if its customers’ electricity needs don’t match up with its hydropower production. It delivers power over a 17,000-mile transmission grid to six states and 5 million people. But as Colorado River flows have shrunk, those purchases have become larger and more frequent.

Last year it bought an extra 413,000 megawatts of power. This year it has already purchased 833,000 megawatts of additional power, according to Meiman. The agency

expects that number to grow as the drought continues with no relief in sight. Power costs are already soaring. Last year WAPA paid $25 per megawatt for its replacement power, Meiman says. This year it is paying $33 per megawatt, a 30% jump. WAPA is forecasting a 35% increase in its costs, but is working to minimize the impact on utilities that purchase its power and anticipates a 12% to 14% rate increase as early as December.

In Colorado, WAPA sells power to some of the state’s largest electric utilities, such as TriState Generation and Transmission, as well as cities, small towns and rural electric co-ops.

“We’re watching the situation closely,” says Natalie Eckhart, a spokesperson for Colorado Springs Utilities, which is a WAPA electric customer and which also draws a significant portion of its water from the Colorado River system. “We care about this on all fronts.”

Few expected power generation at Lake Powell to decline so quickly. For months, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Upper Colorado River Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have been nervously watching what’s known as the minimum power pool level at Powell, the lowest elevation at which power can be produced, which is 3,490 feet. If the reservoir drops lower than that, all hydropower production will stop.

In July, as water levels at Powell were plummeting, Reclamation began emergency releases of water from upper basin reservoirs to protect hydropower production. Those releases are expected to help keep the turbines functioning, but won’t be enough to restore full power production. H This story originally appeared in Fresh Water News, an initiative of Water Education Colorado. Read Fresh Water News online at watereducationcolorado.org.

These turbines at Lake Powell’s Glen Canyon Dam are at risk of becoming inoperable should levels at Powell fall below what’s known as minimum power pool due to declining flows in the Colorado River.

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Jerd Smith is editor of Fresh Water News.

Adobe Stock

Around the state | BY KENDRA LONGWORTH ARKANSAS RIVER BASIN About 90% of the tall spruce on Monarch Pass have been killed by beetles. In an effort to mitigate the impacts of potential forest fires, The Colorado Sun reported that the Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative has teamed up with the U.S. Forest Service. The Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative estimates that roughly 53,500 beetle-killed spruce have been removed from Monarch Pass in the past two years. The Monarch Pass project is part of the Chaffee County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, which involves reducing the wildfire risk on more than 30,000 acres in the Upper Arkansas River watershed.

GUNNISON RIVER BASIN The Lower Gunnison Project appears to have had a significant impact on the selenium levels in the lower Gunnison River. The Colorado River District reported that the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission determined that the selenium levels are low enough to comply with aquatic-life standards, as of June, according to The Daily Sentinel. The river was added to the Water Quality Control Commission’s impaired water list in 1988. Control efforts included lining ditches, replacing canals with pipelines, and installing sprinklers and drip irrigation systems.

COLORADO RIVER BASIN Water levels in Lake Mead at the NevadaArizona border have forced the federal government to declare the first official water shortage in the Colorado River Basin.

Water levels have dropped below 1,075 feet, leading the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to mandate water cuts in Arizona and Nevada starting next year, according to CPR News. The Colorado River Compact requires Colorado to release a certain amount of water downstream to the lower basin states.

Presently, Colorado is in compliance with the agreement. However, existing operating

Lake Mead water level as of October 25 1,067.38 feet The current level is 161.62 feet below full pool of 1,229.00 feet rules and the 2019 drought contingency plans governing river management in concert with the compact are set to expire in 2026. Renegotiation is underway.

SAN JUAN/DOLORES RIVER BASIN The San Juan Watershed Group is working diligently to improve water quality in the San Juan River. According to The Durango Telegraph, stretches of the San Juan River through Farmington, N.M., show high levels of E. coli. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for acceptable E. coli levels is 126 colony forming units (CFU) per 100 milliliters; samples taken this summer exceeded 1,500 CFUs. Research pinpoints the largest contributing source of the E. coli to be humans. Currently, there is no easy fix to the problem, but it can be alleviated by burying waste 6 to 8 inches deep and 200 feet away from water when camping or hiking and by upgrading septic tanks.

SOUTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN

NORTH PLATTE RIVER BASIN The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) unanimously approved $320,537 for the Owl Mountain Partnership’s proposal of an irrigation and infrastructure improvement project at their meeting on July 21, 2021. The Jackson County Irrigation Infrastructure Improvement Project involves the development of three new wells for the benefit of livestock and wildlife, three new springs on public and private lands, 60 acres of re-seeding, two vegetation treatments totaling 300 acres, and 2.5 miles of new permanent fence plus materials for an additional two miles of fence that are cost-share projects.

RIO GRANDE RIVER BASIN Adams State University (ASU) recently launched a “Water Studies Minor and Community Listening Course,” designed to offer a comprehensive overview of water issues facing the San Luis Valley and the American West. Enrolled students of ASU are not the only individuals that the course is open to; community members with an interest in learning more about water are welcome to register.

A dispute between Centennial Water and Sanitation District and Central Colorado Water Conservancy District regarding storage space in Chatfield Reservoir was settled in July. The $171 million redesign of Chatfield was completed last summer and provided more water storage for the Front Range. The reallocated storage space totals 20,600 acre-feet. The Colorado Water Conservation Board ultimately gave up some of its storage space to settle the dispute.

YAMPA/WHITE RIVER BASIN Colorado’s Yampa River may be the key to fueling electrical utility plants in the Yampa Valley. Xcel Energy and Tri-State Generation and Transmission plan to shut down plants in Hayden and Craig by 2030. However, Tri-State and the State of Colorado have partnered in a proposed Craig Energy Research Station, according to Fresh Water News. The existing coal-fired plants have water portfolios that could be used to create green hydrogen or molten salt. Tri-State hopes to participate in the federal government’s Energy Earthshots Initiative, which would drive the costs of green hydrogen down by 80% by the end of the decade.

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Water After Wildfire Colorado’s worst-ever wildfire season in 2020 prompted communities to develop new strategies for shoring up water resources. Here’s what they learned.

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BY KELLY BASTONE

Aerial mulching, where helicopters pick up and spread mulch to reduce erosion at burn scars, was employed here in the Cache La Poudre Watershed in spring 2021, after the Cameron Peak Fire.

Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite.com

n June 2021, helicopters buzzed across the skies above Altona, Colo. Their mission wasn’t to battle wildfire. That quest had been achieved in November 2020, when firefighters declared 100% containment of the 10,106-acre CalWood Fire, the largest ever recorded in Boulder County. Instead, helicopters were working to protect the region’s water supplies from the sediment runoff that commonly follows high-severity wildfires like the CalWood blaze. With summer thunderstorms imminent, there was no time to lose.

Teams of sawyers felled trees and tethered them to helicopters, which flew their cargo to a separate staging area where the wood was mulched and scooped by the half-ton into huge nets. More helicopters carried mulch loads back to the scorched CalWood hillsides to be spread atop ash and soil to hold it in place. Every rainless day was a boon to the effort to mitigate impacts from the previous fire season, buying valuable time for the teams at CalWood and other Colorado locations affected by 2020’s record-setting wildfires to prepare and stabilize soils before the latesummer monsoons hit.

Throughout 2020, more than 6,700 separate wildfires burned a total of 744,120 acres across Colorado, according to the Rocky Mountain Area and Coordination Center 2020 Annual Report. Many of the summer and fall fires were high-severity burns that created hydrophobic soils that prevent precipitation from being absorbed into the ground, explains Jessie Olson, executive director of Left Hand Watershed Center. Rain falling on the impermeable soil releases torrents of ash and sediment into streams and rivers, choking them with debris. And with fewer living plants left to slow the water’s path or anchor the soil in place, flood and mudslide risks rise.

“Catastrophic burns have dramatic impacts to soil stability that overwhelm the balance in unnatural ways,” Olson says. In late June 2021, when the first summer showers hit the CalWood burn scars, Left Hand and St. Vrain creeks ran black with suspended sediment.

Such particulates increase minerals, nutrients and heavy metals in the water, while decreasing the available oxygen, causing fish kills and leading to more frequent and intense algae blooms. Sediment also clogs the spaces between rock cobbles in riverbeds where bugs and fish lay eggs.

Debris and the flood waters that carry it also pose problems for water managers. For example, debris events blackened the Cache La Poudre River this summer after rains hit the burn scar from 2020’s Cameron Peak Fire. Greeley had to close intakes from the Cache La Poudre River at the beginning of July 2021 to avoid burdening its treatment plant with processing the blackwater’s ash and debris. Instead, it relied more heavily than usual on water from the Colorado-Big Thompson Project’s Horsetooth Reservoir, and will continue to do so when the river is too turbid to treat, thanks to an H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 2 1

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When 2021’s summer rains hit the steep slopes that burned in 2020’s Grizzly Creek Fire above Glenwood Springs, Colo., destructive mudslides caused Interstate 70 to shut down.

agreement it negotiated with an irrigation company where irrigators are using Greeley’s Poudre River water while allowing Greeley to use an equal amount of their Colorado-Big Thompson Project water.

Indeed, impacts to water resources from 2020’s fire season “are just starting to happen now,” says Chris Sturm, watershed program director for the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB). “As great a threat as the fire was itself, the greatest threat is probably still to come, from flooding.” Actions taken in response to fire are most critical during the immediate year post-fire, since that’s when flooding and debris can be most detrimental—but the threats to watersheds typically continue for three to five years, sometimes even longer depending on geology and other factors. High-severity burns on extremely steep slopes can require a decade or more to stabilize.

"As evidenced by summer debris flows in Glenwood Canyon, Poudre Canyon, and off the East Troublesome burn area, post-fire flood and debris flow hazards continue to be a great threat for months or years after a wildfire,” Sturm says.

Altona’s helicopter brigade was just the beginning.

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POST-FIRE RECOVERY AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE

here’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to mitigating post-wildfire flooding and water contamination. “Every community must develop its own array of operations, based primarily on the affected terrain,” says Sturm. “However, there are standard technical approaches that should be employed to inform response actions.” He references approaches including stakeholder collaboration, engineering and modeling, and preparation of design concepts.

Greeley, for example, experienced wildfire across the collection areas for four of its mountain reservoirs. Instead of filling those reservoirs as is typical in spring, the municipality decided to leave them empty—allowing the streams to flow through rather than be collected behind the dams—to prevent sediment from filling in the basins.

As with many other wildfire-scarred regions across the state,

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Greeley has also been working to secure burned soil to the hillslopes to reduce runoff and slow sediment flows, either by staking straw wattles to the hillsides or by mulching. Mulching works on slopes that range in steepness between 20% up to a 65% grade, according to a 2021 Ecological Restoration Institute paper on mitigating post-fire runoff. Steeper than that, and mulch won’t cling to the hillside, while on flatter ground, there’s little risk of erosion. “Mulching can be very effective, in that it actually holds moisture and keeps the earth in place,” says Sturm. But mulching is expensive, costing $2,100 to $4,000 per acre. Other approaches include closing burned areas to allow for natural recovery, reseeding, removing debris, closing roads and armoring drainage ditches, among many others.

On extremely steep slopes, such as the ones that burned last year in the 32,631-acre Grizzly Creek Fire above the City of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, hillslope mitigations aren’t viable. Instead of working to slow sediment-laden water coming from No Name Creek and Grizzly Creek, its primary water sources, that city prepared to process it. Glenwood Springs upgraded the filtration technology in its water treatment plant so that it can now handle extreme levels of turbidity, though at a reduced processing speed. It also improved the piping infrastructure for its secondary water source on the Roaring Fork River. And to guard against the damaging effects of mudslides, Glenwood Springs reinforced the structure of its water intake on No Name.

Proving just how vulnerable slopes in the area are post-fire, major mudslides, debris flows and flash flooding triggered by summer rains over the Grizzly Creek Fire scar closed Interstate 70 on 31 days between July 1 and Oct. 20. More than half of those closures lasted all day. As of press time, CDOT crews had hauled away 4,335 truckloads of debris, totaling up to 56,355 tons of mud, trees and rock. In response Gov. Jared Polis issued two disaster declarations: one authorized the Colorado National Guard to help with traffic control and debris management while providing funds to respond to the damage. The other enabled Colorado to seek federal funds to help with highway repair.

Courtesy Glenwood Springs Fire Department

Water Conservancy District, and other regional stakeholders. “But the wildfire response took that to a whole new level,” Vincent says.

“We never would’ve been able to do what we did without those preexisting relationships.”

The allegiance gave rise to “the fastest MOU drafting that I’ve ever been through,” claims Vincent, who forged a voluntary memorandum of understanding that established both Northern Water and Grand County as co-sponsors for NRCS project funding.

The sponsors subsequently tackled the sometimes overwhelming task of coordinating the many local entities that needed mitigation or offered data: About 150 people and some 40 agencies were involved in the email chains and weekly check-ins that merged the technical assessments to identify the areas of greatest mitigation concern. The USGS, the USFS, the CWCB—these and other entities were conducting their own burn damage surveys and reports, all using disparate platforms and requiring GIS analysis. Each of those studies helped land and water managers understand what was at risk and most vulnerable to the fire’s aftereffects, including water and infrastructure resources: which buildings should be protected with mulching, or which waterways were most susceptible to debris QUICKLY BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS n the wake of 2020’s East Troublesome Fire, the second-largest events. Assessments, triage, and restoration efforts all had to be recorded in state history, stakeholders worked together on a speedy executed between late October, when the fire blazed, and May or and inventive response. That blaze charred 193,812 acres across June, when rains would wash ash and soil off the scars and trigger Grand and Larimer counties, on primarily public land—68% of the flooding. Moving quickly was critical.

The newly formed partnership scrambled to develop tools for burn affected U.S. Forest Service holdings, while 10% was on private merging various data sources. They property. That public/private ratio presented a problem consulted existing resources, such for water resource protection because by November as the one invented by the Coalition 2020, when this late-season fire was winding down, the for the Poudre River Watershed, already cash-strapped USFS had depleted its annual which created collaborative systems budget for wildfire response. And the Natural Resources following the 2012 High Park Fire.

Conservation Service (NRCS), which provides postBut nothing met the specific needs wildfire mitigation funds via its Emergency Watershed of the East Troublesome group, Protection program, primarily releases money for work which ended up engineering its own on private land. tools using Northern Water’s team Still, private lands amounted to a whopping 19,000 GIS experts. acres—enough to have a meaningful impact on the Esther Vincent | Northern Water of The takeaway, says Vincent, is water supplies for Northern Water, the transmountain that for communities to be ready diverter and water provider that serves more than a to recoup after wildfire, they need million residents across eight counties in northeastern to be skilled with collaborative Colorado. Northern stepped forward to serve as the local administrator for NRCS funding that could be used for platforms, such as SharePoint, and they need to have GIS expertise— mitigation projects on private property in strategic locations, such if not in-house, then readily available via contract. Such readiness as immediately upstream of water supply infrastructure. C Lazy U will help communities conduct their assessments with speedy Ranch, for example, manages a two-mile section of Willow Creek just efficiency, so they can quickly pivot to mitigation work.

What would be even better, says Vincent, would be for the state to upstream of Northern Water’s Willow Creek Reservoir. After the fire, the ranch built sediment ponds that collect debris before it’s flushed develop such tools and capability, to which individual communities could have access. That’s exactly what’s happening, for all into Northern Water’s reservoirs.

“There weren’t many entities in the region that had the capacity to communities to use in similar times of need. To help with resource sharing, CWCB’s Technical Assistance Team was formed in fall 2020 sponsor a program of this size,” explains Esther Vincent, Northern to assist communities with watershed protection work in the wake Water’s director of environmental services. “It requires managing of wildfire. contracts, working with scores of landowners, tracking expenses, “We realized that it was a lot more beneficial to send technical and generating 25% of the funds as a cost-share, which amounts to resources right out of the gate, rather than send money to start the millions of dollars,” she explains. “It became very clear that, if we process of hiring engineers,” Sturm explains. Not only does the were going to do this, we needed to do it in partnership with others Technical Assistance Team help communities respond to threats in the area.” more quickly, but it also keeps them from reinventing solutions to Fortunately, in recent years, Northern Water had already problems that other regions have already faced and solved. Thus the strengthened its relationship with Grand County, the Middle Park Sometimes, consequences from severe fires simply can’t be fixed or mitigated—that’s when warning systems come into play.

Glenwood Springs is partnering with the U.S.Geological Survey (USGS), the Colorado Department of Transportation, and the nonprofit Middle Colorado Watershed Council to install eight rain gauges that can alert downstream communities like De Beque, which sits downstream of Glenwood on the Colorado River, to storm events that could necessitate shutdowns or evacuations.

“Having enhanced information from the rain gauges will let us make decisions about major tourist areas like Hanging Lake, so we can evacuate and protect people who are recreating there without crying wolf [with unnecessary shutdowns] every day,” explains Paula Stepp, executive director for the Middle Colorado Watershed Council. The rain gauges and related warning system will also forecast the need for shutdown to municipalities along the Colorado River corridor, so they can respond to debris events before they accrue costly damage. Larimer County also developed a “reverse 9-11” emergency alert system to help warn residents of flash flooding.

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“It became very clear that, if we were going to do this, we needed to do it in partnership with others in the area.”

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At the East Troublesome Fire burn area near Grand Lake, Colo., Sen. Michael Bennet hears from staff with the Middle Park Conservation District, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Grand County and Northern Water in May 2021.

team’s assessments of post-burn hydrology and hydraulics, modeling But BAER, like the agency overall, is crippled by a lack of money, of sediment and debris flow, and advice on permits and funding leaving few avenues for emergency mitigation on national forests. represent the best practices from wildfire-affected communities across Greeley achieved a work-around by getting federal permission to use the state. the NRCS’ Emergency Watershed Protection program funding on The first year is the most critical for addressing flooding, says Sturm, public land, and Petrzelka would like to see such special-use permits though mulching and other mitigation measures continue to be effective approved more permanently, for uses beyond the Cameron Peak Fire. in the second or third year after fire— Limited capacity within the USFS also hindered when strategies may evolve to promote responses to the East Troublesome Fire, where the tree regrowth and address any erosive Arapaho National Forest identified $127 million stream channels that may be forming on in projects requiring post-wildfire recovery, and hillslopes. Thus the Technical Assistance estimates for all costs, including those on private Team can help steer communities well properties, exceed $170 million. Yet only $57 Jennifer Petrzelka | Greeley Water million has been received thus far, and more than beyond the first year or crisis.

More state support is coming, thanks to 60% of that funding is dedicated to restoration on June 2021 legislation that offers $30 million non-federal lands that qualify for NRCS dollars. to the CWCB for wildfire mitigation, Thus, most of the funding gap—which exceeds emergency response, and watershed $120 million—affects mitigation that’s yet to be restoration. $500,000 of that funding will create what CWCB calls completed on USFS land. If passed, the federal infrastructure bill “Wildfire Ready Watersheds." Through the program, CWCB will analyze that’s circulating through Congress may provide some money for statewide wildfire risk and susceptibility and develop a framework that wildfire restoration on those parcels, but it’s not clear how much is communities can use to plan for wildfire preparedness and to address specifically earmarked for fire recovery. post-fire hazards.

In the future, all will benefit from CWCB’s recently funded Wildfire Ready Watersheds program. “It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t worked together and testified together and petitioned delegates from PAYING FOR MITIGATION both sides of the [Continental] Divide,” says Vincent, referring to the unding is the crux when it comes to preparedness, mitigation way that representatives from the East Troublesome and Cameron and fire recovery. “This is a huge effort, and it’s really Peak fires joined forces to secure funding. expensive,” says Jennifer Petrzelka, Greeley’s water resources Such allegiances are best formed before crisis hits, sources operations manager. In her four-person office, half of the agree. To be proactive, communities can start strengthening their staff’s time and energy goes to finding funding for mitigations relationships across stakeholder groups now, before the next wildfire that shore up water resources post-wildfire. The rest goes to burns. Because if 2020 taught us anything, says Sturm, “It’s that executing those projects and continuing the municipality’s day-to-day there are going to be wildfires. People are no longer wondering if this operations. will happen, but where and when.” H The strain on Greeley’s staff is due, in part, to USFS funding shortages. The USFS has historically operated its own mitigation program, called the Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER), A freelance writer living in Steamboat Springs, Kelly Bastone covers which assesses wildfire damage and implements restoration efforts conservation and the outdoors for publications including Outside, AFAR, to mitigate impacts on waterways within federal lands and beyond.

5280, Backpacker, Field & Stream, and others.

“This is a huge effort, and it’s really expensive.”

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Courtesy Northern Water

J.T. Shaver, a forester with the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS), loads branches into a chipper. The CSFS’ Salida Field Office, along with stakeholders and partners, has been thinning and masticating trees for a healthier forest, creating a fuel break, and chipping trees and branches for landowners as they create defensible space around homes and other structures.

How Do We Live With Megafire?

BY JASON PLAUTZ

Courtesy Envision Chaffee County

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s J.T. Shaver, a forester with the Colorado State Forest Service, strolls through the Hutchison Ranch, a legacy cattle farm in Salida, Colorado, it’s what he doesn't see that excites him most.

Last year, the trees here were so dense you couldn’t see more than 20 feet away.

The 11,713-foot peak of Methodist Mountain was obscured by piñon-juniper trees.

Now, the trunks are pleasantly spaced out, letting in beams of sunlight. The ground is scattered with wood chips and stumps, feeding a healthy new bed of grasses.

“This looks completely different than this time last year," Shaver says. “I'm pleasantly surprised.”

The landscape’s evolution was the result of a weeks-long treatment organized by Shaver’s office to help this 5,800-person town prepare for wildfire. By thinning the dense thickets of trees, any fire that does reach the ranch shouldn’t burn hot and fast in the crown of the trees. Instead, it should run along the ground with less intensity, burning more naturally. “We're mimicking the behavior of a wildfire that would have occurred prior to European settlement,” Shaver's colleague, Josh Kuehn, explains.

Over the past decade, Chaffee County’s once sleepy population has steadily grown as people seek refuge from the busier Interstate 70 corridor. In 2017, county leaders convened a master planning process but were surprised to learn that residents’ No. 1 concern wasn’t small business sustainability or housing prices or even traffic. It was wildfire.

“We knew about the beetle kill epidemic and saw that our forests were in poor health,” says Kim Marquis, project and outreach coordinator for Envision Chaffee County. “The first step to growth planning was taking on our wildfire risk.”

At that point, Chaffee County had been spared from the intense fires ravaging the state in recent decades, although the 2019 Decker Fire would soon burn just two miles south of Salida. But residents had embraced the frightening reality that few places in Colorado are safe from fires. Climate change and the decades-long drought have been fueling bigger and more dangerous fires, leaving devastation up and down watersheds.

The county assembled stakeholders, including state foresters, federal officials, local landowners and farmers, to work proactively to improve forest health. Aurora Water also

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Colorado’s Ten Largest Wildfires Colorado’s 10 largest fires on record have occurred since 2000 with seven of them happening in the last 10 years. The red circles indicate the number of acres burned in proportion to one another.

SEDGWICK

LOGAN LOGA OGAN

2020

Cameron Peak 208,913 acres 2020

East Troublesome 193,812 acres

1

2012

7

High Park

PHILLIPS

W WELD

87,284 acres

2 YUMA

2020

Pine Gulch

2002

WASHINGTON W WASH INGTON

ARAPAHOE ARAP R AHOE

Hayman

139,007 acres

137,760 acres

3

ELBERT ELBE BERT

KIT CARSON CARSOOON

4 LINCOLN

CHEYENNE

EL PASO

CROWLEY PUEBLO PUE UEBLO UE EEBLO BLO

2002

Missionary Ridge

2013

West Fork Complex

2018

Spring Creek

70,485 acres 109,615 acres 2018

MONTEZUM MONTEZUMA MA

416 Fire

9

54,129 acres

108,045 acres

5

6

8

PROWERS PROW O ERS RS

2008

Bridger

45,800 acres

10 BACA

L PLATA PL PLLAT AT ATA LA

Years With the Most Acres Burned in Colorado Since 2000 In Colorado, more acres burned in 2020 than in any other single year. What’s more, 2020 saw more acres burned than 2000-2009 combined, 2010-2014 combined, or 2015-2019 combined.

Acres Burned Since 2000 ’20

’18

’06

’08

’11

’16

’17

’12 ’02

’10 ’00 ’13 ’09

joined the talks, since a fire near Salida could potentially pollute the headwaters of the Arkansas River, one of Aurora’s primary water sources. The partners thoroughly mapped the area, highlighting the properties and forests most at risk if a fire did come through the Rio Grande and San Isabel National Forests.

While local landowners could take their own preventative measures like shoring

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’05 ’04

’01

’03

’07 ’15 ’14

up buildings and removing dead trees, the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS) also received funding for a more holistic treatment. The Methodist Front Wildland Urban Interface Forest and Watershed Health Restoration Project, funded through a RESTORE Colorado Program grant, along with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Salida and Poncha Springs, and a county fund, will

treat 478 acres of public and private land, masticating trees to thin out the crowns and encourage healthier vegetation. Eventually, with the participation of enough landowners, the fuel break will stretch five miles, creating a buffer between the forest and the ranches, townhomes and small farms in Salida.

From the top of a hill on the Hutchinson Ranch, it's easy to see why the treatment is essential. There are visible gaps between the trees on the ranch land, even though the trees don't look overly manicured.

Meanwhile, the untreated land just south is dense and wild, a potential path of destruction to a new condo development. In the distance, the Arkansas River that feeds Front Range communities is visible.

And to the west, just above the newly thinned forest, is a barren, charred burn scar from the 2019 Decker Fire, a chilling reminder to Shaver of how close Salida came to devastation and why it’s more essential than ever that the town prepare for the new era of fires.

HOW FIRES WENT FROM HEALTHY TO HAZARDOUS

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he Decker Fire, which burned nearly 9,000 acres, came in an unusually calm year in the midst of a decade that has reshaped how Coloradans see fire. Since 2012, six megafires, defined by the National Interagency Fire Center as fires larger than 100,000 acres, have burned in Colorado.

2020 saw the state’s three largest recorded fires to date—Cameron Peak, East Troublesome and Pine Gulch—and some 700,000 acres burned, more than 540,000 of which burned in those three fires alone. And the CSFS’s 2020 Forest Action Plan projects a 50% to 200% increase in the annual area burned in the state by 2050.

There’s no single factor making Rocky Mountain fires more intense. Bark beetle infestations swept through tens of millions of acres of forest in the West over the past two decades, leaving large stands of dead trees. A century of federal policy that squelched out all fires rather than letting them burn naturally led to a buildup of fuel stores in forests. Climate change is creating warmer and drier conditions, and an earlier snowmelt has extended the fire season.

Chuck Rhoades, a research biogeochemist at the USFS’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, says those “compound

Colorado’s Priority Watersheds According to the Colorado State Forest Service’s (CSFS) 2020 Forest Action Plan, 10% of Colorado’s forests need urgent attention to address forest health, wildfire risk, and threats to water supplies at a cost of about $4.2 billion. The CSFS worked with partners and stakeholders to develop this priority map to indicate places where goals related to forest conditions, living with wildfire, and watershed protection can be achieved in the same area though a project or activity.

disturbances” have created a pattern of fires that are burning more intensely and in places and seasons that experts wouldn’t predict. Fires that once would have been a natural tool to clear dead fuel and encourage seeds to sprout are now a major threat to communities. Some, including Cameron Peak and East Troublesome, have ravaged high-elevation forests where fires used to be rare. A 2021 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that high-elevation forests in the Rocky Mountain region are burning more than at any point in the past 2,000 years.

That, Rhoades says, means land managers and cities are seeing impacts outside the scope of anything they’ve prepared for—with ripple effects throughout the environment.

“We often think that where we were before will help us predict where we’re going,” he says. “But there are a lot of question marks out there. It forces a little humility in that we can’t understand what we’re going to get next.”

One known, however, is that the higherintensity wildfires are putting more Coloradans at risk as the state's population booms. In 2020, the CSFS estimated that half of the state's population lived in Colorado’s 3.2 million-acre wildland-urban interface area, known as the WUI, where human

development intermingles with fire-prone vegetation. By 2050, CSFS says that area could triple in size to encompass more than 9 million acres, or more than 13% of the state.

The risks are especially profound for watersheds. As more intense fires clear out thick older trees, shrubs and grasses grow back in their place. Without dense roots and pine needle cover, the forest floor that typically acts as a sponge for snowmelt and precipitation is turning fragile and rocky.

Those are prime conditions for erosion and flooding, with streams and rivers accumulating water faster and earlier than usual. According to USFS research, the risk of flooding and debris flow is higher for at least 3-5 years post-fire, often longer, and those floods can be as much as three times more severe than they would be otherwise.

Runoff from burn scars can run black, laden with ash, debris, nutrients and heavy metals from burned soil and biomass. If those contaminants reach utilities’ water infrastructure, they can clog water filters or settle in reservoirs, possibly fostering algal blooms and taking up valuable reservoir space.

The 1996 Buffalo Creek Fire and the 2002 Hayman Fire, the largest in Colorado’s history until 2020, each burned along the Upper South Platte River, immediately upstream of Strontia Springs Reservoir, H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 2 1

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which accommodates about 80% of Denver Water’s raw water supply and 90% of Aurora’s supply. The fires exacerbated erosion in the watershed, leading to sediment-laden flows that dumped debris and contaminants in the reservoir. More than a decade later, the reservoir’s capacity to store water remains reduced, and water quality is still impacted from sediment flows, even after $27.7 million worth of dredging, removal and recovery work. Last year’s fires caused water utilities across the state to shift their operations to protect their source water.

It’s clear, then, that the risks of fires no longer stay in the forest. Partnerships have sprung up from Boulder to Durango to protect valuable watersheds and water infrastructure, forcing water district managers to become just as interested in what happens to the forest around headwaters as what goes into their customers' pipes.

“We all share a mutual natural resource interest, whether it’s the forest or the fish of the water,” says Ken Curtis, general manager of the Dolores Water Conservancy District in Cortez. “As a water provider, we want to keep offering the same quality water we’ve had for 100 years down here. Now instead of thinking as a water protector, we’ve become part of the watershed protection.”

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ALL HANDS ON DECK

n 2020, the Colorado State Forest Service released its updated Forest Action Plan, identifying some 2.5 million acres— roughly 10% of the state’s forests—as being “in urgent need of treatment.” The highest priority forests were in the Front Range’s Arapaho-Roosevelt and Pike-San Isabel forests and in the San Juan Forest around Durango. “We have to prioritize those areas where we're going to get the most bang for the buck,” says Weston Toll, watershed program specialist for the CSFS. Still, he says, with so much of the state at risk, “we’re paddling against the current.”

The Forest Action Plan’s priority map reflected a range of factors, including where fuel had built up, how close fires could get to human development, and the impact on wildlife and water. But those areas didn’t all line up with valuable headwaters, despite some water managers' arguments that any waterways must be protected. Nor does the map give much direction on how to square

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Watershed Assessment Vulnerability Evaluation (WAVE) volunteers work to install silt fencing immediately above Northern Water’s Willow Creek Reservoir.

the widespread needs with limited resources.

Wildfire mitigation used to be defined by what some experts call "random acts of restoration,” individual projects on small plots of land depending on the owner’s interest and availability. A National Forest might have dead trees removed and fuel treated for insect infestation, but neighboring land might be left untreated, doing little for the overall region’s safety.

Now, the USFS and others are promoting a philosophy of shared stewardship, bringing together a variety of partners ranging from

federal land managers, local water districts, utilities, logging companies, recreationists and private landowners to collaborate on responsible forest management.

Toll says the state may still be paddling against the current, but “it helps to have everyone paddling in the same direction, which wasn’t happening until five or 10 years ago.”

Take the Rocky Mountain Restoration Initiative (RMRI), a partnership co-convened by the USFS and the National Wild Turkey Federation that has brought together federal, state, local, private and nonprofit

partners across Colorado for three targeted restoration projects. Tara Umphries, shared stewardship and RMRI project manager for USFS, says that leads to projects that focus on “consecutiveness,” crossing both physical boundaries and different partners’ priorities.

“Everyone brings their own expertise and their perspective to the table and has their own ideas on how to get this landscape work done,” Umphries says. “A watershed doesn’t just reside on Forest Service land and it doesn’t just provide benefits for one entity or user. To look at a discrete piece of land or Emanual DeLeon, Colorado State University

a single agency for a solution, historically, has not yielded the results we need.”

RMRI was founded in 2019 as an evolution of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Shared Stewardship Strategy, which works across public and private lands on landscape protection. RMRI touts the four values shared by its partners: restore forests and habitat, protect communities, support recreation and tourism, and ensure clean and secure water.

In the first showcase project in Southwest Colorado, RMRI partners have done a

variety of projects in and around the San Juan National Forest, including treating the forest land for dead trees, creating fuel breaks, clearing trails for recreation users, and conducting prescribed burns. At the end of 2020, RMRI partners had worked on more than 26,000 acres of forest, including highpriority areas around the Dolores River and the 381,000 acre-foot McPhee Reservoir.

“If we don't have clean and secure water for people and our natural resources, you can’t get through much else,” says Jason Lawhon, southwest project manager for H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 2 1

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Local Government is Leading the Fight Against Wildfires

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BY ALEJANDRA WILCOX ildfire is its own season in Colorado, but 2020 was an especially brutal year. With climate change and drought expected to worsen, experts agree that Colorado’s wildfire management strategy needs work—and much of that is happening at a local level.

Some counties more at risk for wildfire depend on local ballot measures to raise funds for fire prevention. In 2018, Chaffee County voters passed a 0.25% sales tax increase, with some of that revenue dedicated to forest health work. The county, in partnership with federal agencies, formed a council that has used that money to identify and treat about 1,684 acres in the initiative’s first year.

“A lot of people said, ‘Why the heck should I pay sales tax for wildfire mitigation when the Forest Service should be doing that themselves?’” says Greg Felt, the Chaffee County Board of Commissioners chair. “The answer is: They’re not. Not at the level that we need.”

Felt says Chaffee County discovered that if it came to the table with a funded wildfire mitigation plan, federal agencies were able to match the local funds to help reduce fire risk.

In Summit County, a tax-funded community chipping program aims to create defensible space—the buffer between a structure and the surrounding forest or grass—by asking private landowners to clear potentially dangerous wood and trees and stack them on their property. The county then chips the material and hauls it away for free. This space can help slow

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or stop the spread of wildfire, leaving the home better protected.

Dan Schroeder, the Colorado State University Extension director and fire prevention lead for Summit County, says the county wanted residents to be able to take charge of protecting their homes and understanding their own risk.

“If this place catches on fire, the whole economy—let alone human lives—would be at stake,” Schroeder says.

How can counties keep their residents and resources safe? Ben Tisdel, a member of Colorado’s Emergency Fire Fund Committee and a Ouray County Commissioner, says mitigation has proven to be the most effective solution to fighting fire.

The largest cost of wildfire is recovery, Tisdel says, pointing to last year’s devastating East Troublesome and Cameron Peak wildfires, which impacted watersheds that deliver drinking and irrigation water to the northern Front Range. The recovery cost to rebuild watersheds and ensure reservoirs don’t fill with silt and debris will amount to some $100 million.

“Going forward, it seems really clear that the mitigation side of the equation [forest health and managing wildfire risk] can really help the suppression side,” says Tisdel. “Individual homeowners and jurisdictions need to realize that both are important. It needs to happen locally.” H Alejandra Wilcox is a journalist based in northern Colorado. Her work has been broadcast on KGNU and has appeared in the HuffPost, among other outlets.

RMRI. “That’s often the place we start. Here in Southwest Colorado, water is the most important value.”

Lawhon says that bringing in those partners who can focus on the watershed impacts, whether they’re irrigators or district managers, has helped expand the scale of what the USFS could do alone through additional funding and strategy. “A lot of what we do is identify a project that's already moving in the right direction, then we help it take the next step,” he says.

Curtis, who manages McPhee Reservoir, says the water managers’ role in Western communities makes it easy for them to act as “conveners,” bringing together federal, industrial and municipal partners. The reservoir, which provides irrigation water for 75,000 acres of land and supplies several towns and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, sits on the edge of the San Juan National Forest and would be at severe risk should a fire occur. Curtis says the reservoir has so far avoided serious sediment loading and flooding, and he wants to do as much as possible to keep it that way.

“Everybody out here has forest management plans and they all have implications for us as a water district,” Curtis says. While the Dolores Water Conservancy District can do tree thinning and other protection immediately around the reservoir, it takes more partners to fund and execute the work needed to keep the full headwaters area safe.

Besides RMRI, the Dolores Water Conservancy District is part of the Dolores Watershed and Resilient Forest (DWRF) Collaborative in Southwest Colorado, which includes the San Juan National Forest, five local water districts, conservationists and timber companies. The collective came out of a collaboration between Montezuma County and local timber companies to work on forest health. Organizers say the involvement of private companies is key to its success—not only does it bring their financial power to bear, but the timber industry can also use trees that are felled, providing additional financial incentive to doing the work.

Holistic forest management also requires the help of private landowners whose property borders or includes the most atrisk forests. Blake Osborn of the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University says there’s no “established protocol” for how to take care of private lands like there

During 2020’s Pine Gulch Fire, north of Grand Junction, Colo., hotshot firefighters watch and wait for the fire to burn through brush and move to grass fields, where the flames become less intense, before they can hold it back.

is for public areas, leaving many landowners frustrated and clueless. In 2017, Osborn started the Watershed Assessment and Vulnerability Evaluation (WAVE) to help landowners get technical assistance and craft recovery plans, leaning on the USFS’s Good Neighbor Authority, which allows state forestry agencies to partner with the USFS to tackle projects on federal land.

The key, Osborn says, is that the plans can be tailored to the specific lands and owners’ priorities, whether that be heavy tree cover for privacy or a clean waterway stocked with fish. WAVE can also help connect private partners with the bigger public partners to ensure a truly holistic approach. Although no two landowners have ever shared identical goals, he says, the takeaway message is always the same.

“Something we’re always trying to communicate is that the risks cascade down the watershed, and issues up high may not materialize until you’re down at the city

level,” Osborn says. “But everyone has their priorities at every point on the watershed.

With such an interconnected system, putting some money on a project up here may help protect people miles away.”

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‘MUTUAL BENEFITS’ fter the runoff from the Buffalo Creek and Hayman fires poured sediment into Strontia Springs Reservoir, officials at Denver Water realized they could be spending less money and having a bigger impact by focusing on preventing fires and flooding before the effects reached their infrastructure. The utility formed the From Forests to Faucets partnership with USFS, a multi-year effort to fund forest health projects to boost resilience in priority areas within Denver Water’s collection system. In 2017, the program was expanded to include state and local authorities to stretch Denver Water’s forest health work

Kyle Miller/Wyoming Hotshots, USFS, via National Interagency Fire Center

to non-federal lands. Fuel breaks around the Dillon Reservoir watershed funded by the program are credited with protecting nearly 1,400 homes near Silverthorne during the 2018 Buffalo Fire, despite redflag drought conditions.

“There was this exciting realization that there were a lot of mutual benefits in funding these projects,” says Madelene McDonald, watershed planner at Denver Water. “Forest restoration projects not only bolster source water protection, but also improve wildlife habitat, expand recreation access, and can protect communities in the wildland urban interface.”

Northern Water also has a forest health program, the Colorado-Big Thompson Headwaters Partnership, working with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, USFS, CSFS, the National Park Service, and the Western Area Power Administration to protect headwaters areas. It’s the kind of work that, two or three decades ago, might H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 2 1

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have seemed outside the scope of a water provider focused on bringing clean, safe water to its ratepayers, but has now become an accepted cost of doing business.

Even though the nature of fire has changed, the prevention strategies look similar to what foresters have done for more than a century. Clearing out dead fuel— either by cutting trees or prescribed burns— cuts off the material that would burn in a fire and keeps blazes from becoming as severe. Rather than suppressing all fire, under the right conditions, officials can manage fires in secluded locations that have started from natural means, like lightning strikes, and, during wetter years when winds are low, let them burn naturally.

Another key prevention strategy is the use of prescribed burns, where foresters deliberately set and manage a fire under specific weather and forest conditions.

Considered one of the most effective mitigation strategies, prescribed burns can efficiently clear out fuel, mimicking a natural, healthy fire. However, Toll notes, those burns do come with risks, like the potential to get out of control and negative air quality impacts from added wildfire smoke.

"The risk is always going to be there no matter what, so the question is whether it's worth taking that risk under the conditions that have a high likelihood of success,” Toll says. "[Prescribed burns] also have an educational component by showing that not all fire is bad."

But it is also incumbent on communities to do their own preparation. That can include building codes that require fireresistant building material or defensible space requirements to clear fuel from some established perimeter around buildings. Colorado does not have a state wildfire code or model ordinance, despite recommendations from a 2014 task force, but communities like Boulder and Colorado Springs have regulations governing new homes in at-risk areas.

Counties have developed their own mitigation and evacuation plans for areas in the WUI. Others are adapting their own emergency plans to account for the widespread effects of fires, including the greater risks of mudslides and sediment deposits. Chaffee County, for example, updated its wildfire community plan to account for community expansion into the WUI and the greater threat of fires to 26 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

Andy McCoy, owner of Cascade Timber Salvage, talks with a timber sale administrator with the San Juan National Forest in Southwest Colorado. The timber industry can help thin forests and clear trees, putting them to use and selling them, while reducing the risk of intense fire.

produce a document that didn't just guide county-level mitigation work, but also individual landowners’ preparations.

“There's a big educational component, but seeing a disaster happening right in our faces prepares people,” says Marquis of Envision Chaffee County. “We're asking people to join this honestly heroic story to protect the community.”

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MONEY MATTERS

ddressing all of the CSFS’ Forest Action Plan’s priority areas is estimated to cost $4.2 billion, money that state agencies and local partnerships just don’t have.

USFS spent $1.8 billion in fire suppression, fighting and responding to wildfires nationally in fiscal year 2020, but just $431 million on treatments to reduce fuel buildup through its Hazardous Fuels program, according to national spokesperson Babete Anderson. According to National Interagency Fire Center data, other federal government programs spent $510 million on fire suppression in 2020. According to a Colorado Department of Public Safety report, Colorado’s 2020 fire season cost the state an estimated $38 million in suppression costs and required another $248 million in federal funds. Those state figures don’t include suppression costs footed by local agencies or the costs of property loss, infrastructure damage, watershed impacts, or economic losses. Nor do they account for other private, local, county or federal wildfire expenses.

As of press time, Congress was still negotiating the bipartisan infrastructure bill and reconciliation bill. If passed, the nearly $1 trillion infrastructure bill includes about $8 billion for wildfire risk reduction and forest restoration, including $90 million a year for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Landscape Restoration Partnership Initiative to support forest and grassland restoration secured by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.

The bill also spends $600 million to raise federal firefighter wages.

Fire departments and forest managers can also cobble together money from grants from a variety of federal sources.

In 2021, the Colorado legislature passed SB21-258, which authorized $25 million for wildfire mitigation, recovery and workforce development. In a statement, Colorado Department of Natural Resources director Dan Gibbs said the bill would “quickly move resources to on-the-ground projects and mitigation teams,” a step up from previous efforts that “have lacked the coordination, landscape-scale focus and robust state investment required to properly address the size and behavior of catastrophic wildfires.”

Even with those funding sources, it can be a challenge to prioritize spending in areas with the biggest benefit, or even address the widespread impacts of fires. Studies have shown that up-front mitigation saves costs on fire suppression, but even that is daunting when the needs are so vast.

“There’s just a disconnect between what we spend money on and the protection of watersheds and communities,” says Carol Jerry McBride/Durango Herald

Ekarius of Coalitions & Collaboratives (COCO), a group that has been leading the way to foster collaborative conservation and restoration in Colorado headwaters and nationally. Ekarius’ work began more than two decades ago, as coordinator for the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (CUSP), after the 1996 Buffalo Creek Fire.

When other regions also experienced burns in the 2000s, they reached out to CUSP for advice—COCO formed to mentor those organizations. “A fire could burn on federal land but the post-fire impacts are on the downstream communities,” says Ekarius.

Combining efforts through partnerships like RMRI can make every mitigation dollar go further, as can matching grant programs from the state and federal government. Summit County voters in 2018 passed a $1 million annual fund for wildfire mitigation backed by a mill levy rate adjustment. The timber industry has played an increasing role, with the state offering loans to encourage loggers to produce wood products—everything from lumber to pellet fuel—from forests that need thinning or dead trees that can be cleaned up and put to use.

In a 2019 issue paper, the International Association of Wildland Fire said that it is important to “frame a narrative” around fire that “looks to longer-term landscape outcomes.” That argument, the group wrote,” will eventually have to be won based on economics, as the suppression and recovery costs will by far exceed costs required to educate communities, undertake mitigation works and improve land use planning controls.”

Shaver, the Salida forester, says his community seems to understand that narrative and is on board with the cost of mitigation, knowing that the worst risk could be coming during any upcoming fire season.

“Sometimes there's a feeling that you wish a fire would come through to validate the work,” Shaver says. “But a lot of people say they feel safer, and that in and of itself makes the work successful. Feeling safe is a win whether or not anything ever burns.” H Jason Plautz is a journalist based in Denver specializing in environmental policy. His writing has appeared in High Country News, Reveal, HuffPost, National Journal, and Undark, among other outlets.

Resources for Healthier Forests and Watersheds Wildfire recovery and risk-reducing forest health work are expensive, often beyond the budget allocations of federal agencies. But various federal, state and local programs offer technical and financial support.

U.S. Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Response Program (BAER) Aims to address emergency situations by protecting life, property and natural and cultural resources. BAER data is shared with other federal, state and local emergency response agencies. https://bit.ly/2YxVZv5 Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program A federal emergency recovery program that offers technical and financial assistance to help communities relieve immediate threats to life and property. https://bit.ly/3iD5csQ Colorado State Forest Service’s Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation (FRWRM) grant and loan program Supports forest health or capacity-building projects to address wildfires on non-federal lands. https://bit.ly/3lfFEUg Colorado Hazard Mitigation Fund Recently created through SB21-258 to assist communities in obtaining the matching funds required for some federal hazard mitigation grants. https://bit.ly/3aeX5OA Colorado Water Conservation Board’s Wildfire-Ready Watersheds Program Recently created through 2021’s SB21-240, will assess the susceptibility of water resources, communities and infrastructure and create a framework that communities can use to mitigate and minimize impacts. https://bit.ly/3lf8vbp Coalitions & Collaboratives (COCO) Mentors organizations and offers financial, technical and staff support as well as After the Flames information-sharing webinars and resources, Mitigation Best Practices Training alongside the U.S. Forest Service, and more. https://bit.ly/3An73YB Local Government Funding Sources For example, Summit County voters in 2018 passed the Strong Future Fund, a $1 million annual fund for wildfire mitigation backed by a mill levy rate adjustment.

That has helped fund fuel breaks and other forest treatments in Summit County Open Space.

Water Providers’ Source Water Protection Work Denver Water, for example, will spend $33 million between 2010 and 2021 on the From Forests to Faucets program, matched dollar-for-dollar by government partners. Colorado Springs Utilities is investing $7.5 million between 2019–2023, matched by the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado State Forest Service to total $15 million toward forest and watershed health projects in critical watersheds.

Private Partners and Businesses For example, the Peaks to People Water Fund has created a tool that estimates the benefits of forest fuels reduction work and is securing funding and reaching out to businesses to work with landowners and protect the Big Thompson and Cache la Poudre watersheds in northern Colorado. https://bit.ly/3BpKwMs H E A DWAT E R S FA L L 2 0 2 1

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FEATURE 4

How Megafires Are Reshaping Forests 28 • W A T E R E D U C A T I O N C O L O R A D O

Unprecedented forest disturbance is leading to major shifts in vegetation with implications for waterways

T As Colorado’s climate warms and wildfires burn more intensely, generating more heat, the regeneration of tree species that populate forests after a burn is shifting, transforming Colorado’s forested watersheds.

he megafire era gripping the West isn’t just a threat to human development. Fires now burn so intensely that they literally reshape forests, shift tree species, and turn calm waterways into devastating mudflows.

A 2017 University of Colorado study analyzing 15 burn scars left from fires in Colorado and New Mexico found that as many as 80% of the plots did not contain new seedlings. In a 2020 follow-up study projecting future damage under different climate change scenarios, the most severe scenario, where climate change continues unabated through 2050, showed as many as 95% of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir forests would not recover after a fire. In a “moderate” scenario where emissions decline after 2040, more than 80% of the forest would be replaced by scrubby grassland.

That, said study author Kyle Rodman, could have serious implications for waterways, due to the lack of established trees to stabilize soil and reduce the risk of flooding.

“Just because there aren’t trees doesn’t mean there’s no vegetation. Grasses and shrubs can hold back the soil, but it won’t be the same,” says Rodman, now a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Wisconsin.

Nearly two decades later, the site of the 138,000-acre Hayman Fire, which burned in an area southwest of Denver in 2002, is still marred with patches of bare ground. That fire, according to a U.S. Forest Service (USFS) study, was so severe in areas that it consumed

BY JASON PLAUTZ H. Mark Weidman Photography

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Camille Stevens-Rumann, a forestry researcher at Colorado State University, graduate assistant Zoe Schapira, and field technician Zane Dickson-Hunt gather data in 2019 at the 2018 Spring Creek Fire burn scar, near La Veta, Colo. Here, aspen and scrub oak have sprouted but all pine trees and cones were destroyed in the fire.

the canopy foliage as well as the seed bank for the forest’s ponderosa pines and Douglas firs, limiting regeneration. Overall, the study predicted “gradual return to preferred conditions” in the Hayman Fire area, though some of the worst-hit patches may see permanent vegetation changes.

In lower elevations, some of the heartier species, like the ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, are having trouble regrowing because of the increased heat and months-long drought. A 2018 study found that even seedlings of those species that were given supplemental water in burned areas had lower survival rates than expected because of the harsh natural conditions.

“When you’re planting a garden, those first few days are so critical. The plants need water to establish their roots and get healthy,” Rodman says. “Trees work a much longer timescale. Those first few years should be cool and wet and we just don’t have those conditions too often.”

Some tree species, like the high-elevation lodgepole pine, generally rely on fire because the heat helps them open and release seeds.

But recent fires are burning so intensely that even lodgepole cones are consumed.

A 2020 study in BioScience found that burned forests are showing “major vegetation shifts” and recovering more slowly than expected.

In some cases, heartier species might give way to drier shrub-dominated vegetation that can burn more easily. The study found that, generally, those post-fire “forested areas will have climate and fire regimes more suited to drier forest types and non-forest vegetation.”

That means that hearty forests used to adapting to natural changes are now facing conditions “outside the realm of the disturbances that some forests can handle,” says lead author Jonathan Coop, a professor of environment and sustainability at Western Colorado University.

“We have this paradigm that fire is a natural part of the forest and that forests will always recover,” Coop adds. “These days, we shouldn’t count on that.”

That vegetation shift is especially worrisome for waterways.

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Normally, forest floors soak in rain and snowmelt, releasing it to waterways slowly throughout the spring and summer. Burn-scarred watersheds, however, have faster runoff and a lower water yield because of the loss of natural material and because of hydrocarbons from smoke permeating the soil. A USFS analysis found that more than 50% of wildfire-scarred land area in Colorado showed increased erosion potential, mudslide threats, and sediment in streams for at least 3-5 years after a fire.

Those effects can last even longer depending on natural conditions, says USFS research engineer Pete Robichaud. The wild seasonal swings from climate change are challenging forests by dumping more precipitation on less stable ground.

“The drought cycle is bigger and the wet cycle is more intense,” Robichaud says. “The perfect storm is a high-severity fire followed by a high-intensity rainfall event.”

The harsh natural conditions, as well as widespread damage from bark beetles, has complicated typical recovery efforts. Some scientists say the rapid changes in forest conditions and fire characteristics make it hard to know what the best recovery strategy is. In some forests, for example, aspen trees that regenerate from low-ground structures rather than relying on seeds to sprout may dominate. Especially in low-elevation areas, shrubbier species like the Gambel oak may regrow faster in forests once driven by conifers.

While replanting is a natural step in recovery (USFS hosts six national nurseries that act as seed banks, although it has restrictions on where certain species can be planted), there are even concerns that the natural conditions should prompt a re-examination of how best to revitalize forests. Ultimately, Coop says, we should expect that forests may not look the same as they did in a pre-megafire era.

“I think this points to the need for all stakeholders and the public to start to think outside the box as far as how we evaluate the forests and ecosystems we depend on,” says Coop. “We might have to think about what ecosystems we are saving and under what circumstances we’ll have to let things go and let some changes unfold.” H Mike Sweeney

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