{"id":14153,"date":"2025-12-29T23:04:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T06:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/upper-pine-fire-receives-federal-grant-for-vallecito-flood-recovery\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:44:17","slug":"upper-pine-fire-receives-federal-grant-for-vallecito-flood-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/upper-pine-fire-receives-federal-grant-for-vallecito-flood-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Upper Pine Fire receives federal grant for Vallecito flood recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Remnants
Remnants of Tropical Storm Priscilla dumped 5 inches of rain on Vallecito on Oct. 10 through Oct. 11, according to the National Weather Service. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Upper Pine River Fire Protection District has secured a federal grant to help Vallecito recover from catastrophic flooding that occurred in October.<\/p>\n

The agreement was signed Dec. 22, according to a post on the department\u2019s Facebook page. The fire district was awarded $5 million through the Natural Resources Conservation Service\u2019s Emergency Watershed Protection Program, said Upper Pine president Paul Black.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s roughly $5 million,\u201d Black said. \u201cThey thought that would cover the engineering and the actual work to be done in the channel from the forest down to just above the Vallecito Reservoir.\u201d<\/p>\n

The money is divvied into two sections: technical assistance and financial assistance. Under the technical assistance \u2013 which covers the initial engineering and surveying of the project \u2013 the NCRS will pay 100% of the cost. Under the financial assistance \u2013 which gets into remediating or making private property more resistant to future disasters \u2013 that is the 75%-25% split between the federal government and the community, Chief Bruce Evans said.<\/p>\n

Evans said the NRCS will reimburse as much as 75% of the project\u2019s total cost, with the state of Colorado covering another 12.5% because the flooding received a state disaster declaration from the governor.<\/p>\n

Evans said individual homeowners will pay 12.5% of whatever work is done on their property. For example, if crews working on someone\u2019s property strengthened the bank, dredged water off the property and cut down trees, 87.5% of the total cost for that specific property would be covered by the state and federal governments, Evans said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the homeowner, technically, would only be on the hook for 12.5% of the total cost of whatever the project is going to cost on their property,\u201d he said<\/p>\n

The NRCS will reimburse Upper Pine once the work is completed, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing the project management on it, which is what we\u2019ve been contracted to do,\u201d Evans said. \u201cWe still have to run the approvals through the NRCS and make sure that we\u2019re getting the proper permits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upper Pine must coordinate with engineers to approve the projects, then hire contractors to perform the remediation work. Upper Pine will then pass those bills on to the NRCS for reimbursement, and landowners who have remediation work done will pay 12.5% of whatever the cost of the work on their specific property is, Evans said.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the decision to contract with Upper Pine is all voluntary, he said. Landowners can either choose to work with the department for the discounted rate, or pay the whole bill themselves without any reimbursement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to keep very meticulous documentation on this, and it\u2019s all a reimbursement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Evans said, the department is enterprising the money \u2013 meaning that the accounting for the Vallecito remediation is kept completely separate from the department\u2019s personal financing. That way, the department remains accountable and only receives money for what it is billed by contractors and property owners in Vallecito.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we enterprise something, it means that this money does not get commingled with fire district money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Evans said the agreement has a tight timeline \u2013 the engineering plan must be submitted to the NRCS within 30 days after Upper Pine signed the agreement, and the remediation work itself must be completed within 220 days. Even though they could ask for an extension, he said the department is going to work hard to ensure they don\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

sedmondson@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

$5 million will support remediation efforts; property owners must pay a percentage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1613,994,1370,1500],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-14153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-natural-disasters","tag-trueanthem","tag-upper-pine-river-fire-protection-district","tag-vallecito"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14153"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19356,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14153\/revisions\/19356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14153"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=14153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}