CHERRY CREEK – Standing atop an unremarkable dirt road in western La Plata County, an impressive array of wildlife officials from the federal, state and local governments gathered Friday to announce funding of a new culvert under County Road 113, through which Cherry Creek flows.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams was joined by Colorado Parks and Wildlife Director Jeff Davis, as well officials from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and La Plata County in announcing the new, fish-friendly culvert.
Fish native to the Colorado River Basin evolved in a highly connected network of streams, explained CPW Aquatic Biologist Jim White. Fish will swim into smaller streams like Cherry Creek to spawn, before larvae drift back into larger bodies like the La Plata River. That interconnected network has been severed by roads that pass over culverts that were not designed with fish in mind.
“It’s really critical that we’re putting the pieces back together,” Davis said.
With $702,000 of federal funding, contractors will remove a standard 60-foot-long steel culvert pipe in Cherry Creek and replace it with a “box culvert.” The new passage will allow for a more natural stream bed and allow upstream access to about 20 miles of habitat for roundtail chub, bluehead sucker and flannelmouth sucker.
“We have really varied conditions in all of these streams out here, so the more places those fish can reside and find refuge, the more they can repopulate,” White said.
The roundtail chub is considered a species of “State Special Concern.”
With money available later this year or in early 2025, design and construction is expected to take place over the next few years.
“Partnership” was a frequently heard buzzword of the day. The culvert sits under a county road, on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, and the proposal was written by the state’s wildlife agency and funded by the federal government.
“Fish don’t care about these political boundaries, these jurisdictions, or land ownership,” said Southern Ute Wildlife Fishery Biologist Ben Zimmerman. “They just want to do what they want to do and live the life that they were created to do.”
The project in La Plata County is just one of 43 projects announced in late April, spanning 29 states. This round of grants, which total $70 million, is the third year of annual funding in a $200 million, five-year allotment to the FWS from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill was passed and signed by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Infrastructure investments can be a difficult accomplishment to celebrate Williams acknowledged. In this case, the project in question will reside quite literally below a road.
“That $700,000 makes a big impact, right here, right now,” Williams said.
For her agency, the money has been “transformative,” in part because it allows the FWS to ground the work of a far-off federal bureaucracy deep in the heart of rural, disparate parts of the country.
“The investment has helped us put money in communities with partners and show the impact of ‘when you invest in this, it makes a big difference,’” she said.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
