From The Denver Post (Bruce Finley):
State highway, Denver Water and U.S. Forest Service officials last week said work on a traction-sand removal system along the Fraser River will begin in the spring — at the earliest. Colorado Department of Transportation trucks dump 5,584 tons a year of traction sand, gravel and salt on the west side of Berthoud Pass. This material slides off the road into the Fraser River, “smothering the rocks, which smothers the bug life, which is the bottom of the food chain. Then the fish starve,” said Kirk Klancke, president of Trout Unlimited’s Colorado River headwaters chapter and manager of two water districts, who helped line up about $240,000 in federal and state grants for sediment removal. State studies document dwindling bug life and sculpin — the native bottom-feeders needed to sustain bigger fish — between the Berthoud Pass summit and the town of Winter Park. Denver Water’s diversions from the Fraser River that supply 1.3 million metro area residents and Winter Park’s diversions for snowmaking both exacerbate the damage…
Three concrete basins constructed on the pass along the west side can collect traction material swept off the road during dry periods, [CDOT spokeswoman Stacey Stegman] said. And 3,300 tons of the traction material then can be vacuumed out of the basins.