Click the link to read the article on the Pagosa Springs Sun website (Derek Kutzer). Here’s an excerpt:
On June 2, the Pagosa Springs Town Council heard a presentation from Al Pfister, board president of the Upper San Juan Watershed Enhancement Partnership (WEP), about an application for the state-run Wildfire Ready Action Plan (WRAP) grant. The WRAP grant is a state of Colorado program, with its website describing the program as “locally-developed wildfire ready action plans (WRAP), refining the statewide susceptibility evaluations to reflect local values and community-scale data.” Pfister explained that the total project cost for WEP to do a watershed fire action plan for the Upper San Juan watershed would be about $400,000, and the grant would require a match of about $100,000. He noted the benefits of a WRAP would include identifying critical infrastructure that may be susceptible to risk and developing plans for roads and trails that may be impacted by post-wildfire effects. The fostering of collaboration between planners and emergency management agencies would also be a benefit to the community, he stated.
He explained what a WRAP actually does, saying it fosters stakeholder engagement, collects data and resources for the watershed, and organizes that data into a central database for use down the road. He added that the models could help predict how a watershed will behave in a post-wildfire situation and that the action plan would include both pre-and post-wildfire projects to mitigate damage to the watershed. He added that he was not at the meeting asking for funding at this time, but wanted to give the council a “heads up” that this was coming up.