RV dump station controversy showing signs of progress

But timing an issue if utility extension comes into play

[ by Mark Reaman ]

With no entity in the valley jumping up to offer a space for a Recreational Vehicle (RV) dump station in the northern part of the valley and the town of Crested Butte ready to be rid of the current dump space given neighborhood complaints, early discussion is brewing about eventually placing one in Avalanche Park by the current Baxter Gulch trailhead south of town.

The ultimate idea would be to tie a new RV dump station into a sewer line that could run between the town of Crested Butte and Gunnison County’s proposed Whetstone affordable housing development located south of the Brush Creek turnoff. That would obviously mean extending utility lines outside of town which is somewhat unusual and not cheap. Crested Butte Recreation, Open Space and Trails supervisor Joey Carpenter said at the November 1 council meeting that it is estimated that constructing a sewer line would cost about $1.3 million per mile. It is approximately two miles from town to the Whetstone parcel. Given there is not yet a definitive plan for the affordable housing development, the utility line extension would not occur for several years and the town of Crested Butte has promised that every effort to find an alternative location for the RV dump station would be determined by the summer of 2023.

Carpenter gave council an update on the overall RV dump station situation and communicated that with the new traffic configuration and other mitigation measures implemented on the northeast side of town, it appeared many of the complaints lodged by neighborhood residents near the dump station had been eliminated. He emphasized that more research was to be done and a more complete report would be coming in the spring.

“Honestly, no one is raising their hand to add on an RV dump station in their area. It’s a hot potato,” Carpenter said in regard to the possibility that the Mt. Crested Butte Water and San District, the Crested Butte South Metro District or the East River Sanitation District would show any interest in taking on the facility. “The idea of using Avalanche Park while possibly extending utilities to the Whetstone parcel has just come up in the last two weeks. It is very preliminary but that would be feasible and have enough flow to handle the waste since it would serve residents in Whetstone. But it is a number of years out.”

In a memo to the council Carpenter stated that if town utilities were extended to the Whetstone site it could be viable to place the RV dump in Avalanche Park along Highway 135 and have a pull in/pull out area on the northern edge of the property. He emphasized that while it could be an ideal spot given lack of neighbors and location along the highway, such a move would require extensive planning and funding to pull it off. Permission would likely be required from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) to not build additional turn lanes at the site. He described the Avalanche Park possibility as “the most promising, reasonable and cost effective solution to relocating the dump.” The downside would be that it would not be possible to complete by the start of 2023 and council would need to consider continuing with the current situation or taking the current town RV dump offline and not having such a facility in the north part of the valley for a while.

Mayor Jim Schmidt asked if a holding tank that was pumped regularly could be placed at Avalanche Park. Carpenter said it was possible, but the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has indicated that if the tank took in more than 2,000 gallons of waste on any given single day, more stringent regulations would be imposed immediately. Carpenter said based on his research, RVs average about 40 gallons of waste each when using the dump so if 35 to 40 RVs, especially the larger ones, start utilizing the facility in a day, it could start to approach the upper limit.

Using preliminary numbers from observations of the RV dump operations this past summer the facility averaged 22 RVs per day. The biggest day peaked on August 1 with 28 vehicles. In his report, Carpenter said it appeared that many of the issues identified through neighborhood complaints had essentially gone away. The average speed of vehicles came in at 17 miles per hour so speeding seemed to no longer be an issue. There was no observation of congestion or “vehicle stacking” along Butte Avenue or Eighth Street and people’s driveways and private property were not being blocked. “Speeding and congestion issues seem to have been mitigated with the measures we took this summer and that’s a big win for us,” Carpenter said.

“Quite a few people have been working on this,” he said. “The STOR (Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation) committee has been very helpful. All the partners working on this have been awesome trying to move this forward.”

Crested Butte community development director Troy Russ assured the council that no decision on the matter was expected any time soon but it would be coming back to them next spring.

“The Whetstone alternative comes with the timing issue,” Carpenter told the council. “A decision on whether to extend the use of the current station given the lessening of impacts will have to be made at some point.”