County News

By Roger Baker
County Manager

02/01/2007 - Tuesday’s meeting of the Gilpin County Commissioners was certainly a brief one, but the Commissioners’ day wasn’t over even at the end of the meeting.

  A local representative from Senator Ken Salazar’s office was up to meet with the Commissioners; they then went out to the site for the new Road & Bridge building to discuss the options for alternative fuels that the Commissioners have been looking into.

  Perhaps more important, this year for the first time we received a form from Senator Salazar’s office to apply for federal appropriations for the 2008 fiscal year.

  The Commissioners discussed various projects for which we might seek federal aid, and finally decided to ask for funding to jumpstart the seemingly stalled Rollins Pass road reconstruction.

  As some of you may recall, under the terms of the James Peak Wilderness and Protection Area Act, passed in 2002, one of the conditions for creating that wilderness area was that the old Rollins Pass road, following the railbed of the abandoned Denver & Salt Lake railroad, was to be opened to two-wheel-drive vehicles.

  The problem is, of course, that there was no money earmarked to make this happen, and it won’t be a cheap undertaking. The roadway itself will need a lot of work to make it accessible, but the real stumbling block comes at the old Needle’s Eye tunnel, which had partially collapsed in 1990.

  The Rollins Pass road passes through three counties—Gilpin, Grand and Boulder—but the tunnel, and hence much of the financial liability, lies in Boulder County. Meetings among the County Commissioners and staff from the three counties were cordial but ultimately unproductive; now the attorneys for the counties are meeting to try to establish some sort of structure (a road authority, perhaps) that would limit the liability of the counties while allowing for ongoing maintenance and operations.

  Coincidentally, just this past week we also received a letter from Christine Walsh, Boulder District Ranger for the U.S. Forest Service (ultimately responsible for administering the James Peak Wilderness Area), saying that the project would require a full National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, which will be dauntingly expensive. The tunnel, trestles and roadway itself are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which complicates repair operations still further.

  So what we decided to ask for was funding to do some preliminary engineering work on the tunnel and trestles, so we know how much money we will have to come up with in the long run. Boulder County did a study in 1992, so we have a starting point, but obviously construction costs have escalated dramatically since that time.

  This is just the first step in a very long, long process; but as a cooperative project among three counties, and one which will benefit both local residents and visitors to the state of Colorado, it seems like an ideal project for which to seek federal assistance.