At a recent event celebrating the city of Glenwood Springs having completed its emergency watershed protection project, Mayor Jonathan Godes made a toast.
“It feels wrong toasting with water, but at the same time it is so right,” Godes said while standing not far from the Roaring Fork River. “To Glenwood and to Glenwood’s water.”
Shortly after the Grizzly Creek Fire ignited in Glenwood Canyon last August, the city shut off one of its integral water intakes at No Name Creek for nearly a week as firefighting efforts commenced. During that time, the city relied upon its Roaring Fork pump station, which supplied water to its nearly 10,000 residents as the fire raged on in the canyon.
“They were slurry bombing the hillside, and we didn’t want them to accidentally hit the creek and for us to pull slurry into the intakes,” Matt Langhorst, Glenwood Springs public works director, said in an interview Thursday.
According to Langhorst, the city requires roughly 1 million gallons of water a day in the winter. During the summer, when the Grizzly Creek Fire blew up, an influx of tourists combined with irrigation efforts increases the city’s water consumption to approximately 4 million gallons a day.
As a result of the Grizzly Creek Fire, the city had to bulk up its water intakes with steel armoring to protect the critical infrastructure in the event of a debris flow.
Thanks to a grant from the Emergency Watershed Protection Program and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the city hired local contractor Gould Construction, which originally built most of the water infrastructure impacted by the Grizzly Creek Fire.
“We also shored up the area in case there were debris flows,” Mark Gould Jr., Gould Construction CEO and president, said in an interview Thursday about the fortification work completed around the city’s water infrastructure. “We installed some steel plates around some of the valve structures so that they could still be operated, and we poured a bunch of riprap with grout so that the erosion wouldn’t happen.”
Many of the city’s water infrastructure improvements were completed by Gould Construction even as the Grizzly Creek Fire continued to rage on. Due to challenging terrain and the ongoing firefighting efforts in the area, Gould hired a helicopter company to fly its workers in and out of the area each day as it conducted the fortification efforts to the city’s water infrastructure.
“We flew them up in the morning and flew them out at night, and the entire day the helicopter was flying supplies back and forth … fuel, mini excavators, and concrete in order to shore up the erosion of the system. So, it was kind of wild,” Gould Jr. said. “It really is what is helping the city have a safe watershed, no matter what happens with any debris flows from the scar.”
While much of the fortification efforts were completed as the Grizzly Creek Fire was still burning last summer, all of the remaining work was finished later in winter and spring.
Earlier this month, U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper both congratulated the city of Glenwood Springs and its partners on finishing the emergency watershed protection project.
“We were all struck by the damage of the Grizzly Creek Fire last year, and this is such an important milestone in the rebuilding process,” Hickenlooper said in a May 20 Youtube video. “Unfortunately, due to a changing climate, we’re only expecting to see an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires here in Colorado.”
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