A Wildfire Action Plan Bolsters Cortez’s Local Watershed

Wildfires have immediate impacts — homes and buildings lost, ranches and recreational areas burned, businesses upended — but it’s the secondary effects like flooding that are often just as harmful. Without vegetation like grasses and trees, there is little to slow runoff. Rivers flood and fill with sediment and pollutants, hurting water quality. In recent years, a coalition of southwest Colorado groups formed the Dolores Watersheds Collaborative to tackle local water issues, including the growing risk of wildfires. The coalition, which includes the Dolores Water Conservancy District, Montezuma County, Dolores County, and the City of Cortez, wanted to make local water resources more resilient by identifying and addressing the potential effects of wildfires in the Dolores River watershed. LOR’s funding helped the group hire experts to conduct stakeholder and community meetings and develop a pre-wildfire action plan, setting Cortez on a path to securing its water.

This project is fiscally sponsored by Onward! A Legacy Foundation.