COLLBRAN (AP) – Water coming off the Grand Mesa runs through a complicated geographical and legal maze of miles and miles of irrigation canals, chains of reservoirs, countless individual districts and decades upon centuries of water rights, deeds and allocations.

As the manager of the Collbran Conservancy District for 23 years, Wes Hawkins knew and dealt with all the ins and outs of that system, from the end of a shovel to the legalization of water decrees.

When Hawkins, 46, died in a massive landslide in May as he was checking on one of those irrigation canals, the Plateau Valley lost a well-loved and respected community member.

The community also lost a vast store of institutional, lifetime knowledge.

“The knowledge in his head was unbelievable,” said his widow, Kyla Hawkins, who has taken over the paperwork portion of her late husband’s work.

With Hawkins that day and also lost in the landslide were Clancy Nichols, 51, and his son Danny Nichols, 24. They also had deep knowledge of the valley pioneered by their ancestors four generations earlier.

Their deaths also left gaps in knowledge that are still being felt daily in a close-knit, rural area.

Clancy Nichols had worked for the Mesa County Public Works Department for 24 years, most recently as a crew manager for the road and bridge department in the district covering Collbran. Residents say he knew every inch of the roads in that area, from potholes to bridges.

He was caught by the slide because he had gone out to check on a report that debris had fallen onto one of “his” roads.

“He was instrumental in keeping our roads in fine condition,” said Kathy Harris, a Collbran resident who knew all the men through their participation in the Plateau Valley Fire Protection District, where she serves as secretary/treasurer.

Clancy Nichols had been a volunteer with that department for more than 20 years. Danny Nichols, a newly minted geologist, had followed his dad’s lead and officially been part of the department since he turned 18. Before that, he was a member of the junior volunteer program when he was still in middle school. He kept up his volunteer firefighter status even while he was attending college in Wyoming.

As a firefighter and outdoorsman, he knew the geography and the human terrain as well as some of his elders. He had embraced the local culture of volunteering, whether it be flipping fundraiser pancakes, fighting blazes – or checking on a landslide.

Kyla Hawkins said it was no surprise that Wes, Clancy and Danny were the men to be in the path of the May 25 landslide when it roared down from the top of the Grand Mesa at about 85 mph and covered nearly a square mile in mud, rocks, snapped-off trees and debris.

They were all doing what deeply involved community members who knew the water, the roads and the topography would do.

“When Wes was going out the door that day, he said, ‘This could be something like what happened in Oso, Washington. I’ve got to make sure this community is safe,’” Kyla Hawkins recalled.

The Collbran slide turned out to be more than four times larger than the Oso slide, which killed more than 40 people when it slid into a populated area.

As the Collbran community comes to grips with the changed landscape and the loss of loved ones, it is still struggling in practical ways to fill the knowledge gaps.

“Being born and raised in a place gives you a different perspective. It’s pretty tough to replace someone with that much experience,” said Keith Hatch, the manager of the Collbran District and Clancy Nichols’ supervisor.

The water district made do by having several people pick up portions of the work Wes Hawkins did – work that now includes having to hire attorneys to take care of the complex legal matters that Hawkins handled so deftly.

“Wes was the central point of knowledge. He had connected a lot of the dots. He had collected a lot of knowledge,” said Jess Young, one of those working to keep the water district running fairly smoothly.

Kyla Hawkins said she feels that Wes still has a hand in a job that “he loved with all his heart and soul” – that not all his knowledge is lost.

“I have to believe that he is guiding me,” she said through tears. “I was not part of his job. I had no idea what he did. But he had a computer program built that was completely dummy-proof. It’s almost like it was meant for me.

“I just feel like he is helping me every day. And I want to make him proud.”