Hello!? Stop damaging our wetlands!

The spectacular Northern Lights show Tuesday evening took some of the edge off my irritation when I was told one of Gunnison County’s Whetstone subcontractors again trampled local wetlands this week. But I’m still tweaked…

In last week’s editorial I expressed my disappointment and feelings of a gut punch over what one of the county’s subcontractors did in the wetlands at the turn by Brush Creek Road. I felt it was careless and overdone. I was basically told while some impacts were anticipated, the resulting carnage was more than expected due to some equipment and ground condition challenges. I argued (as a layman) that the degree to which those wetlands were disturbed appeared over the top and that didn’t even include the irresponsible damage to a decades-old river gauging station used to monitor the river and support water rights calls on the Slate. That’s serious stuff.

This time the county’s subcontractor over-encroached into sensitive wetlands owned by the town. No wait, they didn’t encroach, they moved in like a mindless platoon of Borg from Star Trek. Throwing a great big middle finger to the town and anyone who appreciates what wetlands provide, the message seemed to be that resistance was futile and we’ll do what we want.

It didn’t destroy the Town Ranch and only a small piece of sensitive land was impacted, but the contractors did what they wanted without any permission from the property owner, the town. The Borg closed the gravel pit road on their whim, and that forced people working on the school expansion to drive through the wetlands. Because of the season, it looks dry out there but isn’t.

It might be understandable that the construction workers not from here don’t grasp the value of our wetlands like we do. We see life, they probably see mud and weeds.  It’s one reason I would always suggest hiring local contractors that understand the community and its ways when at all possible, instead of bringing in people from out of town to save a few bucks. **We were informed Wednesday that the county dismissed the contractor, Mountain Concrete Group out of Montrose, and did indeed hire a local excavation company, Spallone Construction, to complete the work. Right on.

Anyway, big projects like this one are complicated and always run into issues. It’s certainly not the weather that’s the issue. Bottom line is that my friends at the county are ultimately in charge and have to deal, maybe not with every little problem but certainly with the big picture and how progress or problems are communicated to the citizens. Firing a contractor at this stage of a major utility extension was the right thing to do but could easily cascade into more problems or big delays. We’ll see.

While representatives of the elected board of commissioners this past week reminded all of us of the great goal of Whetstone Village and (in my words, not theirs) the need to break a few eggs to make an omelet, this latest broken egg feels like a Halloween egging of a house and unfortunately shows a pretty quick and thoughtless pattern.

Thankfully, the spectacular Northern Lights settled me down, but I’m still peeved. Like the commissioners, I too believe Whetstone will fill a community need that will ultimately help keep our population diversified. That’s a great outcome. But how we get there matters. Part of the BOCC’s job, a big part of their job, is to not only cheerlead the development, but keep a sharp eye on the costs, the process and what might appear to be screw ups…and share that with the people who ultimately own the project—every citizen of the county. The wetlands issues of the last couple weeks are in my opinion, major screw ups and a bad sign that some believe how we get to a good goal is irrelevant. It isn’t. I appreciate that the county administration took the offending contractor off this job.

Still, the town is rightfully pissed at this latest screw up and made it clear they expect better process, communications and now restoration (Cha-ching!). At the end of the day, we all just want to know what’s going on and make sure it reflects our values. That buck stops at the BOCC.

—Mark Reaman