{"id":1313289,"date":"2019-08-07T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/county-rifle-homes-road-at-risk-from-seeping-ditch\/"},"modified":"2019-08-08T08:37:53","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T14:37:53","slug":"county-rifle-homes-road-at-risk-from-seeping-ditch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/county-rifle-homes-road-at-risk-from-seeping-ditch\/","title":{"rendered":"County: Rifle homes, road at risk from seeping ditch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Failures in the Anderson Ditch are contributing to flooding and water damage to residents of Rifle Village South.<\/strong>
Provided<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Some residents of Rifle Village South have been dealing with so much flooding in recent weeks that the Garfield County commissioners have declared a local emergency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThirty-four years of my life has changed in these past weeks, and it\u2019s just heartbreaking,\u201d Cheryl Minter told the commissioners Monday. \u201cWe can\u2019t even get a loan to get a lawyer because our house isn\u2019t worth a dime now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minter\u2019s property abuts a steep ridge south of Rifle, and halfway up that ridge is an abandoned ditch that neighbors say hasn\u2019t been maintained properly. Now, it\u2019s putting at least a dozen homes at risk of catastrophic damage.<\/p>\n

Tim Kinion, whose house is just across the street from the worst of the flooding, first brought the issue to Commissioner Mike Samson in July, along with pictures of the Minter\u2019s basement where water was seeping up from the ground, as well as flowing from the surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a big problem over here. The county road is in jeopardy,\u201d Kinion said. \u201cAnd it already is, there\u2019s so much water flowing over it, in it, and around it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the meeting Monday, board Chairman John Martin stressed the gravity of the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201c(For) at least seven or eight weeks, this water has been running into their house. Two more weeks, or three more weeks, guess what, foundations are leaving us,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n

The water is also seeping under Remington Street, a county road and a school route.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe road\u2019s going to start sinking \u2026 potholes are going to happen, sinkholes,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n

Martin declared a local disaster July 26, and the commissioners held an emergency meeting July 29, and hired SGM Interests to conduct surveys.<\/p>\n

The issue is connected to the Anderson Ditch, which SGM visited recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe noticed excessive water popping out of the hillside into a ditch in various states of disrepair due to subsidence, mini-landslides, lack of maintenance,\u201d David Kotz of SGM told the commissioners Monday.<\/p>\n

The hillside is a steep grade, making it difficult for equipment to clear the blocked parts of the ditch. Meanwhile, the engineers saw evidence of recent slides, as well as fissures where water had been flowing underground.<\/p>\n

The high runoff this year may be part of the cause of the excessive water. Mismanagement of the ditch could be another factor, engineers said.<\/p>\n

When the current ditch owner abandoned some of the water rights in 2006, the court ordered him to re-contour that part of the slope to its original condition, attorney Lee Leavenworth told the commissioners.<\/p>\n

The engineers doubt that reclamation work was completed.<\/p>\n

The rest of the ditch has not been maintained properly, Leavenworth said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem in that section is, there\u2019s vegetation in it, and the floes aren\u2019t moving through the ditch. So you\u2019re getting a buildup of water that\u2019s causing additional seepage, and can cause ditch failure,\u201d Leavenworth said.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not a simple matter of assigning blame to the owner, because the hillside slides above and below the ditch as well, he said. Plus, it\u2019s difficult to legally determine, in a high-runoff year, what would have happened if the ditch had been maintained.<\/p>\n

Regardless of who is responsible, the commissioners are still sorting out what to do, how to pay for it, and how to avoid future liability.<\/p>\n

A short-term solution could be lining the base of the slope with sandbags, to divert the water into a pipe north to the Colorado River, instead of where it flows now, into Helmer Gulch to the east.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important that we\u2019re doing this to protect the road there,\u201d Samson said.<\/p>\n

tphippen@postindependent.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Failures in the Anderson Ditch are contributing to flooding and water damage to residents of Rifle Village South.Provided Some residents of Rifle Village South have been dealing with so much flooding in recent weeks that the Garfield County commissioners have declared a local emergency. \u201cThirty-four years of my life has changed in these past weeks, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1313289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-22 00:11:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313295,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313289\/revisions\/1313295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}