Grant would pave the way for chip and seal on portion of Kebler Pass Road

Coal Creek Watershed Coalition applied for grants to make it possible

Gunnison County and the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition (CCWC) are teaming up to find funds to pay for a 1.9-mile stretch of chip and seal paving on Kebler Pass Road next year.

The CCWC applied for a Colorado Non-Point Source Grant Program December 4 that would add more than $24,000 to money the county already had from a Department of Local Affairs Energy Impact Assistance Grant to fund paving six miles of Kebler Pass Road.
According to CCWC coordinator Anthony Poponi, part of the road the county had flagged for paving was also an area of concern for the coalition.
“The section of Kebler Pass Road by the ‘Irwin Y’ has a limited natural buffer, so the magnesium chloride or sediment from the road doesn’t have anywhere to go except for directly into Coal Creek,” Poponi says.
The county applies magnesium chloride to keep the dust down and help seal the road surface in the summers. But the “mag chloride” comes at a cost, with components like cadmium, which the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services labeled as a “human carcinogen.”
 Poponi says a riparian assessment of the Coal Creek watershed that the CCWC commissioned from Dr. Kevin Alexander of Gunnison-based Bio-Environs, identified five problem areas in the watershed, and the section near the Irwin Y was one of them.
“As far as I know, previous [Crested Butte] town councils have been unreceptive to chip sealing parts of Kebler Pass Road,” Poponi says. “That’s our approach on this. Our engineering has indicated that this is a best management project for the area.”
The CCWC is asking the non-point source program for more than $163,000 in all to help them implement 10 “tasks” to improve the quality of the watershed. The tasks include things like reclaiming the area around the Forest Queen Mine, reducing overgrazing near the creek and re-vegetating the landscape around Coal Creek through the town of Crested Butte.
Department of Public Works director Marlene Crosby is happy to see the extra money coming in to help her department complete its own task. Just two miles of the six miles paid for by the 2007 Energy assistance grant have been completed to date, and paving another two miles will cost the county about $155,000.
CCWC will find out by March 31, 2010 if they won the grant. If they are successful, the money will be distributed in October. This would be the fourth grant the CCWC has gotten from the non-point source grant program, which helps groups and communities pay for pollution that comes from a diffuse area, instead of one specific, identifiable location.
But with a guarantee of cash on the way, Crosby won’t be waiting until next fall to start paving. She hopes to have the chip seal materials in place and ready for application next summer.
Over the long term, the chip seal road surface is a good investment, Crosby says. To leave the road unimproved, the county would have to continue spraying around 6,500 gallons of magnesium chloride, at $.62 a gallon, on each of more than 16 unpaved miles of Kebler Pass Road.
“There is the cost of the mag chloride but there is also the cost of running the water truck and grading equipment, the manpower and the necessary traffic control when the crews are working,” Crosby says. “At the very best we’re able to do two to three miles a day. And we’re trying to reduce our maintenance costs, because in some places we’re treating twice a year and you still can’t hold some of those tight curves.”