{"id":14886,"date":"2025-12-23T01:17:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T08:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-denies-disaster-declaration-for-archuleta-la-plata-counties\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:45:11","slug":"trump-denies-disaster-declaration-for-archuleta-la-plata-counties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-denies-disaster-declaration-for-archuleta-la-plata-counties\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump denies disaster declaration for Archuleta, La Plata counties"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"An
An excavator stabilizes Vallecito Creek\u2019s banks on Thursday after floodwaters receded after several days of flooding. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

President Donald Trump has denied Colorado\u2019s requests for disaster declarations to help communities affected by wildfires and flooding \u2013 but La Plata County officials say the local impact will be minimal.<\/p>\n

October flooding forced evacuations and damaged the Vallecito Creek channel, but most homes saw minimal impacts and were not eligible for FEMA assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a significant storm, but it wasn\u2019t devastating,\u201d said Rob Farino, La Plata County Emergency Management director. \u201cSo, fortunately, the county is going to weather it a lot better than had a bridge been totally destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bulk of local recovery efforts, directed at creek channel restoration, will be funded through the Emergency Watershed Protection program \u2013 a federal grant administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The EWP program is not tied to FEMA\u2019s disaster declaration process, Farino said.<\/p>\n

The EWP program uses federal dollars but operates independently from FEMA, so local officials do not anticipate disruptions to that funding stream.<\/p>\n

What could be affected is a state-submitted FEMA Public Assistance application, which reimburses local governments for damage to public infrastructure. La Plata County incurred costs repairing a bridge and two county roads.<\/p>\n

Because La Plata County did not meet the federal damage threshold on its own, the state grouped it with Archuleta County \u2013 where damage from the same storm was more extensive \u2013 in a joint disaster request, he said.<\/p>\n

County spokesperson Megan Graham estimated total damages at about $209,000, with most of the costs tied to labor. Had the declaration been approved, the county could have been eligible for as much as 75% reimbursement, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving an opportunity to be reimbursed for some of those expenses would have been great for the taxpayers and for the community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Gov. Jared Polis\u2019 office received notice Saturday that the disaster declaration requests had been denied. Polis and U.S. Sens. Michael Bennett and John Hickenlooper have since criticized the decision.<\/p>\n

U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents Colorado\u2019s 3rd Congressional District, also voiced support for the recovery funds. In a statement Monday, he said he would work with fellow Colorado lawmakers to appeal the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Colorado state and federal delegation were united in seeking assistance after these tragedies, and we ask the administration to work with us on an appeal,\u201d Hurd said.<\/p>\n

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

Emergency watershed funds still expected for Vallecito recovery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1497,28,475,994],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-14886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-flood","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-colorado","tag-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886","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=14886"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19402,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14886\/revisions\/19402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14886"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=14886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}