On June 2, the Pagosa Springs Town Council heard a presentation from Al Pfister, board president of the Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Partnership (WEP), about an application for the state-run Wildfire Ready Action Plan (WRAP) grant.
The WRAP grant is a state of Colorado program, with its website describing the program as “locally-developed wildfire ready action plans (WRAP), refining the statewide susceptibility evaluations to reflect local values and community-scale data.”
The website adds, “WRAPS will lead to actionable wildfire ready watersheds projects.”
Pfister explained that the total project cost for WEP to do a watershed fire action plan for the Upper San Juan watershed would be about $400,000, and the grant would require a match of about $100,000.
He noted the benefits of a WRAP would include identifying critical infrastructure that may be susceptible to risk and developing plans for roads and trails that may be impacted by post-wildfire effects.
The fostering of collaboration between planners and emergency management agencies would also be a benefit to the community, he stated.
He explained what a WRAP actually does, saying it fosters stakeholder engagement, collects data and resources for the watershed, and organizes that data into a central database for use down the road.
He added that the models could help predict how a watershed will behave in a post-wildfire situation and that the action plan would include both pre-and post-wildfire projects to mitigate damage to the watershed.
He added that he was not at the meeting asking for funding at this time, but wanted to give the council a “heads up” that this was coming up.
The WEP would be asking the town for $5,000 to go toward the match, with other stakeholders, such as Archuleta County, Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and others contributing as well.
Council member Mat deGraaf asked for an example of how this type of program could help mitigate damage from a wildfire.
Pfister pointed to “what was done up the Four Mile drainage to protect the PAWSD water supply, and then there was the subsequent Plumtaw Fire and that mitigation work that was done there essentially precluded impacting PAWSD’s water line.”
He stated that similar mitigation could be done on the PAWSD water diversion up the West Fork of the San Juan “to make sure that the water diversion is protected, or at least to minimize impacts.”
He added, “That’s where all the engineering will come in to say, OK, if we have a 100-year flood with a fire before it, then they would be modeling to say what can be done to minimize the impacts.”
Council member Gary Williams said, “I do want to thank you for your work … and the town wants to harness this volunteer energy to help us do this kind of thing.”
Pfister said that the state is “really stepping up to provide money” for these type of projects.”
derek@pagosasun.com
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