MEEKER -- Weeks after the embers cooled from two major wildfires that hit Rio Blanco County this summer, recovery efforts are just getting warmed up.
And some of those involved are advising that the fires' impacts and the work it will take to recover will go on not just for months but years.
"Some things are going to change with the landscape for a long time," Reece Melton, the county's natural resources manager, said while showing a reporter around damaged areas early this month.
The fires created lasting and costly impacts, harming power infrastructure, leading to post-fire debris flows, and damaging rangelands and fencing.
"We're going to be dealing with this as an electric cooperative and the county's going to be dealing with this and landowners are going to be dealing with this for years," said Alan Michalewicz of White River Electric Association, which faces tens of millions of dollars in damages.
The Elk Fire east of Meeker and Lee Fire southwest of it were started by lightning in early August. The Elk Fire burned more than 14,500 acres, and the Lee Fire, which combined with a second fire, reached 137,758 acres in size, making it the fifth largest in Colorado history.
DEBRIS DUMPS
Heavy rains that helped tame the fires also have pointed to some of the perils that continue to lie ahead. Water poured down slopes laid bare by flames, resulting in debris flows that have clogged ditches and culverts and dumped sediment in waterways.
"I hauled rocks for three days just to try to get them out of the pasture," Mark Englert said as he stood amid flood debris along County Road 8 east of Meeker. His house lies just south of the road. He was forced to evacuate during the fire and at the time thought, viewing things from a distance, that the house had burned. But he was relieved to learn later that it had been spared, and praised the work of firefighters that included saving a historic schoolhouse just across the road despite nearby structures being lost.
The debris flows have been another matter, though. Flows dumped mud and rocks onto a lower grass pasture he leases out to a neighbor who keeps horses there. Englert cut a small ditch in hopes of diverting flows from the pasture should more flows occur.
"I think the spring runoff is going to be something to deal with," he said.
Taking it all in stride, he called out after being interviewed, "If you want to move rocks just give me a holler."
The county's debris flow problems began even before the danger from the fires had ended.
Said Melton, "We weren't able to even establish debris flow modeling before the rain came. It kind of happened at the same time (as the fires). There wasn't even a chance to step back and assess the risk before the next disaster situation showed up."
'ONE EVERY WEEKEND'
Thad White, the county's public works director, estimated as of early October that about eight distinct debris flow events had hit the county as a result of the fires and rain.
"It's been one every weekend. We work our work week cleaning it up and then boom, and then you come right back and here we are, cleaning it up again," he said.
Flows temporarily closed roads, among them County Road 5, a major access road for oil and gas facilities and operations in the county. County road crews have had to work to clear roads of what can be multiple feet of flood debris, clean out clogged ditches and culverts and deal with other threats such as nearby trees that White said were hollowed out by flames and are liable to fall over.
The county has a long backlog of culverts to unplug despite efforts to clear some of them. White pointed to one County Road 5 box culvert that he said is probably 12 feet deep but managed to fill up with material that accumulated to probably 2 feet above the guardrail. White said it took three days to clear that culvert. Some the culverts can be cleared with a sewer jetting machine, but some that are plugged with rocks that can't be removed will have to be dug up and replaced. The same goes for some plastic culverts that simply melted away due to the heat of the fires.
White thinks the county will be dealing with debris flows from the fires for at least five to seven years.
"It's going to be continuous for a while," he said.
As in Englert's case, some of the flows spread out onto fields as well as roads. Melton notes the agricultural impacts that will result from fields being covered in mud and debris.
He said some landowners had barely had the chance had to clean up from one debris flow when the next one came. Besides being concerned about their homes, they have dealt with flows covering hay meadows and filling irrigation ditches.
He said based on what he's being told, some of these issues could continue for three to five years.
RIVER SEDIMENT CONCERNS
As he drove up County Road 8, he pointed to ditches that he's understanding have been filled two or three times with mud and debris and dredged out by landowners. He said it's costly work for the landowners, but while it's necessary to keeping the ditches operating, it also has the benefit of keeping sediment out of the White River.
"I can't stress enough it is at the expense of the landowners, but our agricultural lands, our irrigated lands, our ditches are filtering and capturing a lot of debris that otherwise would flow right to the White River," he said.
Melton said the Natural Resources Conservation Service has estimated that two sediment ponds owned by a landowner impacted by one of the local fires have caught about 33,000 cubic yards of post-fire sediment.
"That's a lot of sediment," he said.
Such sediment is top of mind for the Rio Blanco Water Conservancy District. Alden Vanden Brink, the district's manager, said there has been a lot of sediment loading in the White River from rain storms in burn areas. Like Melton, he thinks that's going to be a multi-year problem.
He said a concern is deteriorated water quality as a result of things such as higher nutrient levels in the water. This includes nitrogen and phosphorus that are contained in burnt organic matter and soil. Nitrate in drinking water can create concerns for public health and cause harm to young livestock, he said. High nutrient levels in water also will enhance algae issues that already exist on the White River, he said.
He said the district is working to develop a nutrient monitoring plan. Also the U.S. Geological Survey has detected E. coli bacteria, which can be harmful to humans, in the river but the district hasn't been able to get that agency's data on that due to the federal government shutdown, Vanden Brink said.
The district is interested in the E. coli situation in part because it manages recreation downstream on the White River at Kenney Reservoir, where it also operates the dam. The E. coli issue could become an issue for swimming in the reservoir next spring, and the district will be conferring with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on the matter.
Vanden Brink said water quality also matters to the town of Rangely, which gets its water from the river. It also is important to private domestic water users who pull water from the White River, and to cow-calf and ewe-lamb operations that also rely on river water. He said Rangely disinfects its water to address potential contaminants such as E. coli.
He said a lot of local irrigation relies on pumps to move water from the river, and sediment can be a problem because it is abrasive to those pumps. He said the district is watching out for that problem and how it can mitigate it.
Accumulating sediment long has been an issue at Kenney Reservoir, but Vanden Brink said so much is coming into the river now that it isn't all settling out in the reservoir, and some it is making it further downstream and settling several feet deep in flatter areas. He said a good spring runoff is needed to blow out that sediment.
"We're seeing geological change to the White River and how it functions. I've been informed to be prepared for probably eight to 10 years of pretty good change to our system. I'm hoping it doesn't take that long but we're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best."
FISH, WILDLIFE IMPACTS
Vanden Brink and Melton with the county also are watching with interest the situation at Colorado Parks and Wildlife's Lake Avery in the Elk Fire area. It has been sitting empty because of work being done on the dam, but also could face future sedimentation issues related to the fire.
Said Vanden Brink, "We've been visiting with Colorado Parks and Wildlife and getting an understanding of how they plan to operate that reservoir."
Parks and Wildlife imposed voluntary fishing closures in mid-August on part of the White River as well as its North Fork and South Fork tributaries due to water quality concerns related to the fires. Vanden Brink said high sedimentation can kill fish because they can't breathe.
Another question in Rio Blanco County, where big game is prevalent and hunting is a big part of the culture and local economy, is how the fires will affect wildlife habitat. Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Rachael Gonzales said in an email that the impacts of fires "on wildlife can vary significantly depending on several factors, including the severity and intensity of the fire, its size, the speed of its spread, and the pattern in which it burned.
"When we look at a map of the burn area, we often think that everything within that area is gone. That's not the case."
She said there are still pockets of vegetation in areas that weren't touched by the fires.
"While wildfires can have negative impacts to landscapes, wildlife habitats, and homes in certain areas, they can also play a vital role in restoring and rejuvenating the landscape. By resetting the process of ecological succession, wildfires can transform older, less productive vegetation communities into more diverse and vigorous ones. This regeneration can create a variety of habitats across the landscape, benefiting different wildlife species that thrive in these newer, more diverse environments, compared to those that depend on older successional communities."
'WE SAVED MOST OF THEM'
Meanwhile, ranchers continue to assess the losses and deal with the impacts of the fires. Sheep ranchers Renae and Paul Neilson had herds on summer Forest Service grazing allotments that were threatened by the Elk Fire. She described how crews trailed the herds here and there in hopes of protecting them from the fire, sometimes pushing the animals 10 miles a day amidst smoke and dust.
"The ones that were brought to the private ground we were blessed that the neighbors opened their arms and said 'bring your sheep in.' We'd be at one place for a week and then we'd trail to the next place."
Fortunately the Elk Fire never reached national forest land and the Neilsons' summer allotments. But Neilson said being moved around was tough on the sheep and left them thin. The Neilsons and their herders never found about 100 lambs that Neilson said probably died of causes such as predation.
"It's quite a bit of money when you lose that many lambs but at least we saved most of them; that was the goal," she said.
The Neilsons have a fall grazing allotment on Bureau of Land Management land that completely burned. They don't normally feed their sheep hay in the fall but are doing so this year. She said that, having gone through so much, this year's lambs were probably the smallest they ever raised, and after coming off the forest early they also went to market early, being sent to a feedlot, which is resulting in feedlot bills the Neilsons don't normally incur.
Melton said the impacts of the fires are different for every rancher, and the unforeseen costs can be challenging where profit margins are tight. He said the federal Farm Service Agency has been working with landowners to assess their needs, and it will be an ongoing process between multiple entities to get resources deployed to help landowners. FSA has programs to assist with things such as grazing losses and fence and farmland repair.
Just replacing fencing might cost anywhere from $7 to $11 a foot, Melton said.
"That is a significant cost when you start talking in miles versus feet," he said.
Said Neilson, "It just breaks my heart what some of those ranchers lost."
But she also takes heart in how the community came together during such a trying time.
"You know, the cool thing about a community like this is the ranches, they just pull together. I had cattle people saying, 'Renae, I know Paul's on the forest (rescuing sheep), what can we do to help you?' I said, 'well, actually, I've got to evacuate a bunch of sheep.' So here they come with their big cattle trailers and they load those sheep and they take them to another cattle person."
Having grown up as the daughter of local sheep rancher Nick Theos, she's familiar with the historical divisions between cattle and sheep ranchers.
"But when it comes down to it we're all stock people. It doesn't matter if you're raising chickens," she said.
Coming Sunday
The two fires in the Meeker area have left the electric utility reeling.