The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Well looks to be adequate and project staying on budget
By Mark Reaman
The new Crested Butte Fire Protection District campus near the cemetery should be ready for safety personnel to move in by early November. Construction is finishing up, but the district is still contending with a few kinks.
“It looks like we are tracking for an early November move-in date,” explained district CEO Sean Caffrey. “The biggest hold up at this point is the water treatment equipment which is on back order till late October.”
The well that will provide water to the buildings has been a bit of a thorn, but it seems to have gotten straightened out. Caffrey said the well is looking good and getting a consistent six gallons per minute. That is lower than the ideal of at least 10 gallons per minute, but Caffrey said they aren’t worried.
“We were speaking with the local water commissioner who indicated that the Glacier Lily subdivision only gets two GPM from their well, so we are feeling pretty good,” he said. “He also mentioned this has been a pretty serious drought year, so it is probably a good test of what a low water year looks like.”
Caffrey said the district has installed a 1,500-gallon cistern to supplement the well “so we’re pretty confident we will have the domestic water needed with a solid reserve.”
As for the work taking place in the wetlands by the Slate River north of the fire station building, Caffrey said that is the installation of the dry hydrant in the river. “A dry hydrant is an additional community fire protection feature that will allow our trucks to pull water directly from the river if needed for a nearby fire,” he said. “The rest of the time it is just a fixed pipe that sits in the river with a strainer on the end. There are very similar installations near RMBL in Gothic and Hidden River Ranch south of town. There are also many more around the district in standing water locations or attached to cisterns.”
The cost of the station, the building for Crested Butte Search-and-Rescue and a training building is budgeted at approximately $27 million. The project remains on budget to date. Voters approved a $25 million bond issue for the construction project that yielded a total of $30 million in project funds. That bond included money for housing units to help local firefighters and EMTs. Caffrey said the district is looking at developing a duplex in the Larkspur subdivision beginning next year to begin to address the housing need.
A grand opening event is scheduled for at the new safety campus for November 14.
