BOB BERWYN
summit daily news
January 4, 2007

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SUMMIT COUNTY - Along with seeking increased federal dollars to tackle the growing forest health and wildfire challenges associated with the mountain pine beetle infestation, High Country communities are also looking to tap into local funding sources.

One idea floating around at the state level is a regional self-taxing forest protection district, said Gary Severson, director of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG), an organization that covers the area hardest hit by the insect invasion.

At Thursday's Summit pine beetle task force meeting, Severson said a trio of state lawmakers is working on a bill that would authorize creation of such a district. The legislators are Rep. Al White, from Grand County, Sen. Joan Fitz-Gerald and Rep. Dan Gibbs, representing Summit, Eagle and Lake counties.

Severson said the lawmakers and staffers are still working out the details of the bill, and right now it's uncertain how much money could be raised with a small property tax increase. But funding continues to be the biggest hurdle in executing the forest treatments deemed necessary to protect communities, watersheds and important infrastructure from potential wildfire hazards. The Forest Service has done the environmental studies needed to authorize the work; the challenge is finding the money to pay for it.

Different options

Severson said the lawmakers considered several different funding options, including a statewide measure that would probably have been a hard sell out on the Eastern Plains, were it may be tough to convince voters that a pine beetle infestation in the mountains has any effect on their lives.

"It could be crafted in such a way as to encompass the areas hardest hit by the beetles," Severson said. The bill could be modeled after a funding mechanism for funding the Colorado River Water Protection District, dating back to the 1930s, Severson said.

And passing a bill at the state level is the first step. Ultimately, voters in the affected areas would have to approve any tax increase, Severson said. There may be some lively debate on the measure before it's all said and done, Severson told the task force.

"We're already getting some real chafing, with some people saying, 'I was smart enough to build my house out here in a meadow. Why should I pay to protect some rich guy who wants have a house way out in the woods,' " Severson said.

Preventive treatments

State and federal officials at the task force meeting also suggested that municipal water providers along the Front Range could be part of the solution.

Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Rick Cables, of the U.S. Forest Service, pointed out that the agency manages the key watersheds for those water providers.

"We manage Denver Water's headwaters for free," Cables said. He explained that Denver Water spent $20 million cleaning silty ash out of reservoirs after the 1996 Buffalo Creek fire.

"If we'd had $1 million to treat that area (preventively), Denver Water would have $19 million in the bank," he said, suggesting that preemptive treatment could have prevented the fire or lessened its impacts. He also said Denver Water customers ultimately pay for those costs, and that with a focused education effort, they could be convinced to make that up-front investment in forest and watershed health.

One simple way to generate some funds from that source could be to enable people to round their water bills up to the nearest dollar, suggested Colorado State Parks director Lyle Laverty, adding that he approached Denver Water chief Chips Barry with that idea several years ago.

Funding overview

The issue of finding money for forest health treatments has to be viewed in the larger context of how much money the U.S. Forest Service spends on fighting fires, and especially to prevent damage to private property adjacent to national forest lands. According to the Forest Service, about 8.5 million homes have been built in the wildland-urban interface zone across the West during the 1990s. In 2003 and 2004, the Forest Service spent as much as $1 billion protecting private property, the fastest-growing segment of the agency's firefighting budget.

This year, forest fires burned across some 9.8 million acres of land, with half of that in the hands of state, county or private individuals, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of the Inspector General. The report concluded that private landowners and local governments should pick up more of the tab.

But not all local government officials agree. The fire risk has increased because of federal mismanagement of national forest lands, and the federal government thus carries the responsibility of paying for the consequences, some state officials said in a Jan. 2 story in the New York Times on firefighting costs.
 

Bob Berwyn can be reached at (970) 331-5996, or at bberwyn@summitdaily.com.