U.S. Forest Service
Costs of fire and fire rehabilitation/restoration, and the need to do any, has been a topic on this blog, and this was in the Denver paper this morning so I thought I’d post a link to this Denver Post story. More info and photos of mulching can be found here.
Note: I am not saying we should suppress all fires. I am not saying we should do fuel treatments everywhere. I am just pointing out some places that the funding and how much, is coming from.
A federal program to provide emergency watershed protection on Thursday poured $2.45 million into work stabilizing land burned during the devastating High Park and Waldo Canyon fires this past summer.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service in Colorado received an allocation of $1.2 million for Waldo Canyon in Colorado Springs and $1.25 million for High Park in Larimer County.
The sum is less than requested, said NRCS state conservation engineer John Andrews but will help to complete projects to stabilize soil, slow runoff and protect the watershed in areas that are considered moderately to highly burned.
In High Park, where more than 87,284 acres were burned, the money will be supplemented by about $410,000 from the cities of Fort Collins and Greeley, Larimer County, Northern Water and three small water districts known as the Tri-Districts, NRCS district conservationist Todd Boldt said.
There, the work includes reseeding and mulching, clearing debris, flood protection and efforts to keep sediment from flowing into tributaries of the Big Thompson River.