“The 64,000-pound elephant in the room that I don’t think ever really fully gets addressed is acknowledging what is the safe carrying capacity of Highway 82 and, by extension, I-70,” Garfield County resident Siri Olsen said at Monday’s Garfield Board of County Commissioner (BOCC) meeting. Representatives from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) presented an update, after which they took questions and comments from the public.
Olsen said that housing developments in the Roaring Fork Valley have not been reviewed wisely, and should be reviewed for regional impacts.
She added that community leaders need to prioritize the safety of current residents and that maybe not everyone who wants to live here can actually do so. She pointed to the Paradise Creek Fire, which ignited in South Canyon during rush hour on June 9, as a prime example, stating that even though it was a smaller brush fire that was quickly contained, “It turned into chaos.”
Olsen urged the BOCC to pause, look at current impacts and come up with a better plan.
“Because I do not want to find myself like the people in the Pacific Palisades Fire, sitting in dead-stop traffic on [California State Route 1], running for my life out of my car to try to flee a fire,” she said.
“We did have gridlock last week,” said Commission Chair Tom Jankovsky. “And it just seemed like CDOT did play a part [in] that.” Firefighting efforts closed down I-70 in both directions for hours that afternoon and detour directions were confusing.
On Monday, CDOT representative Jared Morgan explained that CDOT was at the mercy of the Paradise Creek Fire incident command on June 9.
“The reason we had eastbound [I-70] closed is because they ran their fire hoses from the river up the mountain so they would have more water capacity,” he said. “So we couldn’t let traffic flow westbound. It was gridlocked, and we were trying everything we could do to get one lane open.”
At the same time, he continued, for public safety, everybody had to stay out of the fire area. “But when that’s your only route to go West, we were looking at the northern detour route out of Wolcott, up through Craig and back down through West Rifle,” he said. CDOT held off, he added, because incident command kept giving possibilities of when the road could open and CDOT didn’t think they’d need the detour. Finally, after three hours, CDOT announced the northern route detour. One hour later, incident command gave the go-ahead to open I-70’s eastbound lane.
CDOT’s Joe Bajza, who was on-scene June 9, said that hindsight is 20/20. “We should have implemented the northern detour way sooner than we did,” he admitted. “That’s where our decision-making gets difficult, running off of incident command when those possibilities of opening get pushed and pushed and pushed.”
Missouri Heights resident Susan Sullivan cited similar concerns, including cumulative impacts of housing developments.
“Why doesn’t CDOT take all of these applications together,” she asked, “and evaluate the traffic impacts so that the developers can pay for the traffic impacts they create instead of the public, later when we find ourselves in gridlock?”
Officials from Glenwood Springs, New Castle, Rifle and Carbondale also provided general comments.
In other news …
Other items included approving contracts for construction projects at the Garfield County Airport and a final PUD plat along Sunlight Parkway. The county’s holiday schedule was approved, and a ban is now in place through July 5 for the sale, possession or use of any and all fireworks in unincorporated Garfield County.
After some discussion with Mary Kenyon, director of Valley Meals and More (VMM), the BOCC gave $35,000 for home-delivered meals served to more than 240 at-risk elders in eastern Garfield County. VMM volunteers deliver meals four days a week.
Jankovsky and Commissioner Mike Samson said they would like to see Glenwood Springs and Carbondale invest more in the program. Carbondale provides over $18,000 annually to the county, said Kenyon, for weekly congregate meals for older adults. Kenyon told The Sopris Sun that 89 of the folks VMM serves live within Carbondale city limits; 24 live in unincorporated Garfield County.
After an executive session, the BOCC voted unanimously to file a lawsuit in Garfield County District Court against the City of Glenwood Springs over a 1041 permit dispute for the South Bridge Project.
“While the City has not specifically stated they will not file a 1041 application, it has become clear in their correspondence that they will not be filing [the application] as they continue to refer to a ‘disagreement’ regarding the 1041 process,” County Attorney Heather Beattie stated.
The county and the city have been at odds since April about whether the project needs a certain type of permit to build on county land. Beattie told The Sopris Sun in an email that the issue is not about the project itself.
“It is a lawsuit to have the court determine whether the city is required to comply with the county’s 1041 and floodplain regulations,” she said.
Archived BOCC meetings are at the Garfield County website.