Commissioner Bill Wallace recounts his trip to Washington, D.C.

Summit County Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force

Report on the July 20, 2006 Meeting

Frisco, Colorado, July 20, 2006---Summit County Commissioner Bill Wallace recounted his trip to Washington, D.C. last week to meet with the nine-member Colorado congressional delegation and US Forest Service officials.

Wallace, along with representatives of local governments from Eagle, Routt, Garfield, Grand, Jackson and Moffat counties, sent a clear message to the lawmakers that the bark beetle epidemic was a nonpartisan issue worthy of a unified legislative approach. 

The congressional delegation subsequently agreed to create a unified bill that would address wildfire danger, watershed contamination, wood utilization from infested trees and other challenges posed by the bark beetle outbreak.  They promised to work on a solution that would include other affected Western states. While their intention is to pass meaningful legislation during the next session of Congress, they will pursue administrative solutions in the near term that could allow more immediate mitigation work.

Task force members Courtney Staatz, representing Senator Wayne Allard, and Dan Gibbs, representing Congressman Mark Udall, also attended the Washington meeting. Both were impressed by the turnout and resulting agreement among the four Democrats and five Republicans to work together in the best interests of all impacted communities.

Our local officials then met with Dale Bosworth, chief of the US Forest Service, to determine if any funds in the current budget might be directed to Colorado. They also examined whether specific administrative policy changes could help local forest rangers expedite fire mitigation projects in the wildland-urban interface.

A general discussion followed about how the task force should proceed. One strategy would be to find ways to reduce bureaucratic hurdles and identify funding sources for projects that could begin next spring. Another would be to establish a working group to fund and develop a long range regional forest health plan.

Steve Hill, special projects coordinator for Summit County, informed the task force that a final version of the Community Wildfire Protection Plan is slated for adoption by the commissioners next week. The Summit County Fire Council has been hard at work identifying the most critical areas for fuel abatement projects. The county has also issued over $20,000 in grants to homeowners associations conducting mitigation projects in their neighborhoods this summer.