Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative asks county to back wildfire mitigation, monitoring and watershed restoration work

Jonathan Pappley, representing the Arkansas River Watershed Collaborative (ARWC), told the Lake County Board of County Commissioners on March 11 that the nonprofit is continuing and expanding wildfire mitigation, watershed restoration and water-quality monitoring across the Arkansas River basin headwaters.

"We were formed out of a need for wildfire mitigation, post fire flooding, back in 2017," Pappley said, describing ARWC—s work since the 2017 season and citing the group—s recent recovery effort for the Interlaken fire. "We work across private and public land from a water perspective."

Pappley outlined three primary program areas: CoSWAP-supported wildfire mitigation crews (Colorado—s strategic wildfire action planning program, administered by the state, which provides crews and project management support), the Twin Lakes Wildfire Ready Action Plan and the California Gulch comprehensive watershed restoration program. He also described a new RiverWatch citizen-science water-quality monitoring effort that has begun sampling Lake Fork Creek for metals and other parameters.

On California Gulch, Pappley said ARWC had secured roughly $4 million through a Natural Resources Damages (NRD) grant and had matched that amount with an additional $4 million, producing an $8 million program budget spanning multiple years and sites. Pappley said the California Gulch program includes culvert and crossing replacements, wildfire mitigation and mine reclamation work to reduce legacy-mining contamination.

Pappley described an ask to Lake County for operating support in 2025: a $31,000 total request for county-related tasks, with about $10,000 coming from a CoSWAP grant and a net county cost of $21,300. "Will only be 21,300," Pappley said, and he told commissioners he had set that amount aside in the commissioners— budget for 2025.

Commissioners and staff asked for details on several topics. Commissioner Matt Bullock asked whether ARWC was testing for fire retardant compounds after the Interlaken fire; Pappley said ARWC—s immediate post-fire focus had been ash and debris and that other entities such as Aurora Water and Colorado Springs Utilities were conducting some testing and could be asked about specific chemical analyses. Pappley named a consultant (Blue Elements and one Emily Osborne) as a potential contact for studies of fire-retardant runoff but said ARWC had not led that particular study.

Pappley also described a successful culvert replacement on County Road 11 and showed maps and aerial data used to prioritize Twin Lakes mitigation work. He said some NEPA work that had delayed mitigation funding is now complete, enabling federal partners and local organizations to pursue more on-the-ground mitigation.

"That's our number-one targeted area basically in the basin, because of the importance of Twin Lakes, and so we already have that grant and that's moving forward," Pappley said of the Twin Lakes work.

Pappley ended by asking for continued county partnership and noted that ARWC will convene a Twin Lakes stakeholder meeting in the coming week. Commissioners expressed strong support for the collaborative—s approach and for leveraging utility and state funding to extend local dollars.

Speakers quoted in this article come from the meeting transcript; direct quotes are attributed to the speaker named at first reference.