NEDERLAND — After years of planning, the town of Nederland is inching toward having a critical fire evacuation route that could save not only human lives but the water infrastructure needed to fight a fire.
But inching is the key word in a project that’s been stalled by lack of consensus over where the route should go as well as funding and “competing priorities,” said Jonathan Cain, Nederland’s town and zoning administrator.
Town officials met July 15 with a contractor and the Nederland fire department to discuss plans for two egress roads out of the Big Springs neighborhood, which lies southeast of the town shopping plaza between Magnolia Road and Barker Meadow Reservoir and is home to around 200 residents.
Board member Tania Corvalan said it’s been around 15 years since the town started trying to figure out how residents would escape a fire in the neighborhood that sits in mountainous terrain covered in thick timber and, as one official put it, with “no exit points or entrance points” from the east, where firefighters would need to access the area if a fire roars in from the west.
The South Rim fire is one of two wildfires burning Thursday near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in western Colorado. The park has been evacuated and is closed. The Montrose County Sheriff’s Office, in coordination with the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and WestCO Dispatch, is actively monitoring a wildfire on the south rim of the Black Canyon. (Photo courtesy Montrose County Sheriff’s Office)Uncontrollable and extreme wildfires are projected to increase 14% by 2030 and 50% by the end of the century, according to a United Nations report with contributions from more than 50 experts. As of September 2023, Colorado’s wildland urban interface — where forests and natural areas meet towns and cities — was thought to be the state’s most dangerous fire zone, encompassing approximately 4.5 million acres, or about 45 times the size of the city of Denver, according to analysis by the Colorado State Forest Service. And the USDA reports Nederland, dead center in the wildland urban interface, is 96% more likely than anywhere in the U.S. to experience a catastrophic wildfire based on weather, ignition spots and topography.
The concern about escape paths gained new urgency after the 2021 Marshall fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Superior, sparking disputes over how to reconcile limited local budgets with increasingly destructive wildfires in communities across the drought-stricken West.
But the scenario in Nederland shows money isn’t the only thing slowing projects that could save lives. Forest and wetland health, access and dealing with multiple jurisdictions also pose thorny obstacles.
Factoring in evacuation
Around 2010, some residents of Big Springs pushed back on an egress route the town was eyeing that Corvalan said “was half-full of a bunch of lodgepole pines” in poor condition, “and half large old-growth ponderosas and spruces and firs and a wetland.”
The residents formed a coalition with the town, and after a year of discussions identified a path off of Doe Trail Road, which dead ends at the northeast corner of the subdivision. That route climbed a ridge to Magnolia Road, which connects Boulder Canyon and the Peak to Peak Highway a few miles south of Nederland’s town center, and avoided some of the features in question.
But when the fire department inspected the residents’ choice “they decided they didn’t like it because it went up a draw and posed a fire risk to firefighters and evacuees,” Corvalan said, and they recommended taking the road due east from Doe Trail, through another part of the forest, over a creek and behind Barker Dam.
Now the town is eyeing both options, with input from the Nederland Fire Protection District and community members.
Charlie Schmidtmann, Nederland Fire Protection District chief, said both the Nederland Fire Department and the Timberline Fire Protection District prefer the route below Barker Dam, which would involve construction of a new bridge.
Sparse areas of trees, yet to be thinned, are seen on the Forsythe Canyon Trail on March 24, 2023, in Nederland. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)Schmidtmann’s primary concern with the Magnolia route is access: “As mountain people know, going downhill (toward the dam) when it’s slippery is a little bit easier than going uphill (toward Magnolia Road),” he said, even though once people reach the top of Magnolia they still have to negotiate steep switchbacks “that most people know are pretty heinous” when covered in ice and snow to get back down to Boulder Canyon.
A potential challenge to the route below Barker Dam is there’s currently no road below it and the City of Boulder would have to approve one since they own the land.
That was a red flag for Big Springs resident Jim Reis, who said, “I’m going to just cut right to the chase and say it doesn’t sound like we have made the proper connections with the city of Boulder and Boulder County for us to be in the final design.
“Before we start going on another train walk and actually nailing that down, that seems like a very big showstopper. If we get some nods, yeah, maybe it’ll be okay. But if we don’t actually (talk) to the city, county and the Forest Service, and be sure that these routes are actually correct, we’re just wasting money continuing down this path.”
Cain in an email said the town doesn’t “totally know the answer” to Reis’ question yet, but “we want to engage with the City of Boulder…building on our great partnership…in the last phase of planning.” They want to make sure the City of Boulder’s needs are met, he added, “as it’s important to remember that Barker Reservoir is hugely important to City of Boulder.” The town hopes to work with the city collaboratively to meet both entities’ needs, Cain said.
Cost wasn’t discussed at the meeting, but regardless of the amount, Cain said the town currently only has funding for planning and even that congressionally directed money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is set to expire before the contractor believes it will complete plans.
“Within the changing landscape of official grants, some things that have happened in the past are different,” he added. But he knows one of two things will happen with Nederland’s egress grant: “Either we will re-scope it so we can get to a point where everyone’s comfortable with the deliverables for the project, or they’ll give us time to get to the full shovel ready design.”
Funding’s an issue everywhere
Brett Wolk, associate director at the University of Colorado’s Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, said Nederland is far from the only community grappling with how to keep its residents safe at a time when fires are increasing and funding can’t keep up.
“Tons of other mountain towns and specific neighborhoods have similar access issues across Colorado and the West,” he said, “and where values of human life and safety overlap with things like watershed protection or high recreation,” there is added urgency for attention.
But even with a slate of federal, state and local sources and initiatives working to improve this, there’s “more need than available funding” even with the additional boost from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the state’s Strategic Wildfire Action Program and Forest Restoration and Wildfire Risk Mitigation grant programs.
But “there are many, varied reasons implementation timelines are slower than some would like,” he added. “As you are seeing with the town hall meetings, making the science and emergency planning best practices relevant to local context and community values is key to success and getting to implementation. It takes time to make those connections and get people aligned enough to move forward.”
Cain said Nederland is hopeful its federal partners will find a way to help the town “get this long-standing project into a shovel ready state. We are close to the finish line and are optimistic that can happen.”
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