The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
It seems to be working but there is a future alternative
[ By Mark Reaman ]
The big kerfuffle over people lining up to use Crested Butte’s RV Dump station and disrupting a local neighborhood seems to have subsided but that doesn’t mean the issue has gone away. In fact it will be coming to a head this fall when the issue will again be in front of the council.
After myriad complaints about the increase in traffic and potential safety issues as RVs pulled in to use the dump in 2019 and 2020, the town initially voted to close the dump, but after broad community pushback re-opened it with directional traffic changes that seem to have alleviated much of the congestion problems. But the council said the RV Dump station would only be open until the end of the 2022 season while an alternative location was found. The current RV Dump station is located adjacent to the town wastewater treatment plant.
In a memo to the council from Crested Butte recreation, open space and trails supervisor Joey Carpenter, reminded the council that the dump is supposed to be open until the end of this camping season. There are only two other such dump sites in the valley, one in Gunnison and one in Taylor Park that is past its usable life.
According to Carpenter’s memo, traffic cameras were used at times in 2021 to monitor activity at the dump. “Peak usage topped out at 28 vehicles on August 1,” he relayed. “The highest concertation of visits was between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Most visitors utilized the station correctly…Vehicle stacking on Butte and/or 8th Street was eliminated because of the measures that were implemented in 2021.” He also noted that zero tickets were issued by marshals for idling vehicles although the town did receive some complaints about that issue. As for the voluntary payment collections, $12,400 was collected in 2020 while $7,600 was collected in 2021.
Carpenter said that the other three nearby wastewater treatment plants (Mt. Crested Butte, East River Sanitation and Crested Butte South Metro) all express zero interest in adding a dump station to their services. So Carpenter informed council that the staff consensus for the most viable alternative to the current site was to construct an RV Dump Station along Highway 135 if the town ends up providing wastewater services to the proposed Whetstone affordable housing project proposed for south of town.
“Suitable flows would come from the Whetstone development to move waste into our town treatment systems,” he wrote. “Utility extensions would be completed and paid for as part of a much larger project instead of an extension solely for the dump station. If permitting could be obtained from CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation), an ‘on/off ramp’ style entrance-exit could be developed eliminating the need for turn lanes.”
But Carpenter stated this would not be possible to complete by the start of the 2023 season. “Council would need to consider continuing with the sunset and having no North Valley station available until completion or revisiting the sunset if appropriate plans for an alternative are underway,” he said.
While admitting that the traffic reconfigurations to the dump station were temporary in nature, he said they seemed to have made a marked difference in improving circulation and related traffic concerns in the neighborhood. While one neighbor consistently continued to complain about the RV Dump in 2021, he said that this year, there have been fewer complaints overall but a letter was sent to council in June by a neighbor raising safety concerns.
Town staff will continue to monitor the situation for the rest of 2022 and he said the council could expect to see the issue on one of their agendas this fall.
