Fire Dangers Escalating; Enforcement In Question
Rick Langenberg
Green Mountain Falls and the entire lower Ute Pass is facing a daunting task: Grappling with a growing nuisance tree and fire safety crisis.
And unfortunately, luck may be running out for the small Ute Pass community that has escaped the wrath of major wildfire disasters that have struck the region in the last decade.
The details of dealing with the growing problem are quite complex. More specifically, how do you start tackling the issue, when virtually all private property owners could be violators of some aspect of the town’s nuisance tree law; not to mention the biggest violator of the code itself, the town of Green Mountain Falls.
However, if no action is taken, the town may just have another law on the books that can’t be enforced, while its public safety situation with potential wildfires and serious power outages and grid failures escalates to an extremely dangerous level.
This is the dilemma confronting the town of Green Mountain Falls and is a subject that generated a lively discussion at a recent town workshop regarding its problem tree scenario.
Virtually all the elected leaders agree that the town faces serious problems with dying, infected and diseased trees, and just way too much overgrown vegetation altogether. This was one of the driving forces behind the recent formation of a Nuisance Tree Task Force, comprised of representatives of a variety of agencies, such as the state forest service, the Coalition for the Upper South Platte (CUSP), the town of Green Mountain Falls, the Green Mountain Falls/Chipita Park Fire Protection District and more. “Trees are growing up here a lot faster than we are taking them down,” admitted Town Manager Becky Frank. In the last few years, the town has made considerable strides in thinning considerable acreage around select trail areas, with the help of a variety of organizations.
But how to deal with the touchy subject of enforcement is causing mixed opinions among community leaders and became a slight stumbling block in a recent debate on nuisance trees.
The problem is pretty basic: The town and Ute Pass corridor sports way too many trees, a situation that could led to a catastrophic fire and significant power outage. And if you live in town, you probably have a problem tree on your property that could be considered one posing a fire and public safety risk.
“Every property in town contains a nuisance tree,” said Frank, who favors having an annual assessment done on infected tree areas by the Colorado State Forest Service, similar to a program implemented in Woodland Park. That way, town leaders could prioritize problem areas in a more objective fashion and get more property owners to participate in correcting the problem. She doesn’t want to see the community’s tree menace turning into a neighborhood war.
Currently, the town has a complaint-driven nuisance tree policy on the books. But enforcement has been lacking, and virtually non-existent, unless public areas or power lines are at risk. However, even that is a dicey subject, especially when a power line is struck by a dying tree.
He cited such efforts as the Team Rubicon program, in which volunteers descended on the town for several days and did significant mitigation on 25 properties, as a better solution. Most of the people targeted for this program didn’t have the resources to do the work themselves. Walker even participated as a Team Rubicon volunteer himself, a task he described as a life-changing event.
That is a fine and dandy approach, noted Mayor Todd Dixon. But he stressed the importance of targeting certain risk-prone areas. “I look at it from a risk perspective,” said Dixon. “We have to get private property owners on board.”
Trustee John Bell, a member of the Nuisance Tree Task Force, meanwhile, favors developing a multi-year plan, and allocating designated funds every year by the town government.
Then, there is a debate on whether the town should devote time towards beetle-kill, menace infecting hundreds, and possibly thousands of trees, or concentrating on public safety aspects of the problem. Most trustees favor the later approach.
Clock is Ticking Before a Disaster
Whatever action the town takes, the clock is ticking. This point was emphasized by Steve Murphy, the chief of the Green Mountain Falls/Chipita Park Fire Protection District during the workshop. “We have been lucky,” said the chief, who presented a dire portrayal of the community’s growing risk with dying trees. He outlined the danger of these trees falling on power lines and key infrastructure spots and sparking catastrophic fires or massive outages. “We have to start somewhere,” said Murphy, who noted that the town has traveled down the nuisance tree trail for a lengthy time, but with little success along the compliance front “We are more concerned with the public safety part of it,” said Murphy.
GMF Marshal Sean Goings, a member of the nuisance task force, cited the importance of public education, with the hope that residents will take more action in ridding their properties of problem trees. “Enforcement is not the end goal,” said Goings.
Frank agrees, and said initially the community needs to concentrate on problem trees that pose significant public safety issues. She admitted too that the town is probably the biggest violator of the nuisance code. She wants the town to provide resources for residents, so they obtain grants for addressing the problem or hook up with specific contractors.
But at the same time, officials concede that the town is fighting decades of just poor tree management. During the recent workshop, Frank presented photos of the way GMF looked in the 19th century, pictures that showed hillsides with few saturated tree areas.
GMF and the entire Ute Pass corridor have suffered from what the mayor describes as “100 years of incorrect forest management.”
