Draft plans for Weir Gulch — which envision the acquisition of up to 70 residential properties — are now more than five years old. But they’ve attracted only limited public notice as city officials have discussed larger plans to revitalize the South Platte system.

City and federal officials emphasize that those plans are subject to change as they ramp up public outreach to impacted residents and get a clearer picture of what flood risk looks like in 2024 and beyond.

While some potentially affected residents in the Barnum and Barnum West neighborhoods told The Denver Post they were aware of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ 2019 study and property map, the risks and project recommendations were news to at least some who live a stone’s throw from Weir Gulch.

Miki Yang, who lives two doors down from the gulch on Perry Street, had no idea last week that her property was part of any federal environmental study or real estate plan. She has lived in her home for three years but has owned the property for over a decade, renting it out to others before moving in with her family.

“Kind of strange,” she said after learning from a reporter that her home was circled on the Army Corps map, recommended for acquisition. “I never heard about it.”

Improvements along Weir Gulch and Harvard Gulch are planned as part of a larger South Platte revitalization project that has won $350 million in federal funding for the city. The Post reported Sunday on the significant potential impact on the horizon as city officials, developers and nonprofits work on projects to improve the South Platte and build dense new neighborhoods alongside it.

Water-flow and habitat projects along the gulches, which travel through Denver neighborhoods on their way to the river, are still being solidified.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2019 published a report identifying roughly 70 residences — mainly in the Barnum neighborhoods — that may need to be acquired to make room for the expansion and improvement of Weir Gulch. The total value at the time was $23.1 million, the report says.

As for south Denver’s Harvard Gulch, the Army Corps determined that there was no economically feasible plan for acquiring structures. Instead, it recommended voluntary participation by some homeowners in flood-proofing measures, such as elevation improvements to their lots or having their basements filled in.

Reducing flooding during storms

Weir Gulch, a zig-zagging waterway, takes the form of a close-to-natural creek bed in some places. In other segments, it’s an open-air concrete basin or runs completely underground. It travels under roadways, park space with playgrounds and even some buildings as it ferries water from Lakewood to the Platte in the Sun Valley neighborhood.

Weir Gulch and the areas around it represent the largest unmitigated flood risk in the city, said Ashlee Grace, director of Denver’s Waterway Resiliency Program, an overall $550 million project.

“The intent is definitely to increase the conveyance capacity so (that) it keeps the flows in the channel, and not spilling into the community that surrounds it” after heavy rainfall, Grace said.

Despite that 2019 report, officials say it’s not a certainty that the city and its partners with the Mile High Flood District will need to acquire the homes identified by the Army Corps.

Design work is complete only for the portion of the Weir Gulch project in Sun Valley between where it meets the river and West Eighth Avenue, city officials say.

The city negotiated the purchases of five commercial properties last year to make that first phase possible, according to Nancy Kuhn, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure. Of those parcels, two were vacant land and the others housed tenants including a construction company, a software firm, and a granite slab testing and storage business.

“Additional portions of Weir Gulch have not yet moved into the design phase, so it’s too early to know what, if any, property impacts there will be,” Kuhn wrote in an email last month.

In an emailed statement, Bert Matya, the project manager overseeing the South Platte River and tributaries work from the Army Corps’ side, also said that it was too early to specify property impacts beyond the Sun Valley section.

“The Corps looks forward to working alongside Denver to develop innovative approaches that deliver the intended benefits of the project to the community,” Matya said.

City-led outreach aimed at better determining the risk in those neighborhoods will begin in 2025, according to Kuhn, though she said the Mile High Flood District may start reaching out to people who live along the gulch sooner.

The study phase of the broader Waterway Resiliency Program dates back to the Obama administration, and the program has evolved over the more than 10 years since the Army Corps launched that assessment. It reached two major milestones in 2022, Grace said, when it was granted the $350 million in upfront federal money through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Denver became part of an Army Corps pilot program.

That pilot is aimed at overhauling how the U.S. government approaches massive infrastructure projects, with an aim of speeding up timelines and saving money. Part of that is accomplished by giving local governments more control.

“That puts Denver in the driver’s seat of project delivery and the Army Corps in the approve-review role, which is a complete role reversal,” Grace said.

Moving “would turn my life upside down”

In the Barnum West neighborhood, Caroline Cordova has had a portion of the concrete channel of Weir Gulch as a neighbor for 25 years. She knew her home on Quitman Street was on a map of potential acquisitions for the waterway project after attending some community meetings about it a few years ago, she said.

Her takeaway from those meetings was that officials hoped to avoid using eminent domain to acquire properties to make way for the work.

But Cordova has no interest in selling her home and moving. She said she’d never been affected by flooding even when the water was high in the channel next door. In the high-priced Denver housing market, she’s not even sure where she would go. Her house has tripled in value since she bought it.

“It would turn my life upside down if I had to move,” Cordova said.  “As far as I am concerned, I am there until the day I die.”

City Councilwoman Jamie Torres, who represents west Denver neighborhoods, said improving Weir Gulch is going to be a very challenging project that will require “potentially scary conversations.”

She emphasized that discussions about home acquisitions, should any be necessary, could still be years in the future.

But Torres has already advised one homeowner who lives near the gulch not to build an accessory dwelling unit on her property, at least not before the city has provided more clarity.

“I hate to think of my residents taking on additional real debt when we don’t exactly know what’s going to happen in this gulch area,” Torres said. “At the end of the entire process, though, we want to help create a much safer corridor. We want to help utilize this open space so it can be a better park system for residents (and) a better trail system for residents.

“So we’re just trying to make sure that we’re very honest and very careful about that conversation.”

Grace, from the city, said the city’s increased authority over how the project is run already is netting some benefits.

The section of the Weir Gulch that the city will get to work on next year in Sun Valley was eyed for a long box culvert in the 2019 study. Denver instead will build a bridge over an open channel at Decatur Street, a design change that Grace says will improve safety during high-water events and provide more accessible open space the rest of the time.

“One of the strengths Denver brings to the table is we know our community,” Grace said. “We’re in the midst of updating what was understood to be the conditions in 2019.”

Barnum and Barnum West have been identified by the city as neighborhoods vulnerable to economic displacement. After looking at the Army Corps’ map, Ean Thomas Tafoya couldn’t help but notice all the Latino last names listed on the properties identified for potential acquisition.

Tafoya is a former Denver mayoral candidate and the Colorado director of Green Latinos, which advocates for environmental justice issues. He also grew up in Barnum and remembers catching crawdads in Weir Gulch.

Tafoya said he supports projects that protect water quality and reduce flood risks. But he has seen Denver’s minority neighborhoods bear the brunt of the impacts of other large infrastructure projects, like the recent Interstate 70 expansion in northeast Denver.

He expressed hope that city leaders could find solutions that don’t uproot residents along Weir Gulch.

“In the middle of a housing crisis and a climate crisis, we think the solution is to displace historic Latino communities?” Tafoya asked.

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While a new era of river revitalization projects and riverside development plans is taking hold, water quality often remains below state standards. Some sections of the South Platte still stink. And despite a promise by former Denver Mayor Michael Hancock to make the river swimmable, city health officials still warn against going in the water — especially during the summer months.

“If you want to go swimming, go to a swimming pool — you’re much safer there,” said Jon Novick, the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment’s water quality program administrator.

The recent swell of attention on the South Platte — by developers, community leaders and city officials working to improve conditions — has highlighted the many environmental challenges still present.

Wastewater plants discharge effluent into the river, and companies such as Suncor Energy release a range of substances into the South Platte and the streams that flow into it. Among them: inorganic nitrogen, arsenic and the class of PFAS compounds known as “forever chemicals.”

Denver’s health department for decades has tracked a swath of contaminants as well as river conditions. The department monitors water temperature, acidity, nutrients and metals.

But the department’s biggest concern is E. coli bacteria, which can cause infections or sicken people if ingested, Novick said. E. coli can enter the water through animal or human waste. Denver’s aging infrastructure means that sometimes wastewater pipes leak sewage, which eventually reaches the river, he said. All of the city’s stormwater flushes to the South Platte.

The bacteria spreads faster in the warmer waters of summer, which is when people are most likely to want to take a dip. E. coli concentrations increase as the river flows downstream to the north.

In its most recent water quality report, published last October, the DDPHE ranked South Platte water quality as “fair” — above “marginal” and “poor,” but below “good.” E. coli levels exceeded the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission’s standard year-round in 2022. The river also exceeded standards for arsenic, which is naturally occurring in the bedrock under the city.

The river also suffers from the byproducts of the millions of people who live nearby. Anything on Denver’s streets and sidewalks not blown away or picked up eventually makes its way to the river: trash, lawn fertilizers, runoff from roads, pet waste, oil and grease from vehicles.

Part of the Mile High Flood District’s work is to help local governments better clean stormwater before it reaches the river.

The district — founded in the wake of Denver’s catastrophic 1965 flood — has tracked some positive trends in the river’s health. Nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen have generally declined, said Holly Piza, the district’s research and development director. The nutrients from products like fertilizers can cause algae blooms and hurt aquatic ecosystems.

But other water quality issues are worsening, she said, including salinity — which hurts aquatic life and can damage infrastructure.

Attempts to mitigate the problem across Denver include a set of bioretention ponds outside the Carla Madison Recreation Center on Colfax Avenue. Those help retain water after rainfall and filter it through the dirt, instead of allowing all the water to flow immediately toward the river.

Novick and Piza urge Denverites to be more thoughtful: Don’t use fertilizers with phosphorus or nitrogen. Don’t litter. Wash your car at a car wash. Make sure sprinklers are watering grass, not pavement.

“There’s a ton the city is doing to improve water quality,” Novick said, “but we can’t be everywhere and we can’t do it all.”

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Roger Hill has fought for more than a decade to reclaim public access to these rivers where ill-informed or intentionally errant landowners have attempted to block access. He calls his act of fishing on stretches where public waterways flow through private property marked with no trespassing signs “civil disobedience.” Just this week, the 83-year-old resolved to continue his fight, and asked others to join the movement.

We echo his call for action but want to be clear that we are not calling for civil disobedience because the law is on Hills’ side.

Law enforcement officers should know that they cannot enforce trespassing laws on public property – in this case, rivers that are floatable even as they pass through private land. Homeowners who call a local sheriff on fishermen and rafters should be met with laughter.

Collectively ignoring these false claims on publicly owned waterways is the only path forward, after years of ignored pleas for change. Lawmakers have refused to address the issue for years and the Colorado Supreme Court has avoided ruling on cases. Every year of inaction by the Capitol and the courts, landowners are emboldened to claim more of our natural resources from the public.

However, that doesn’t mean the “Right to Wade” movement is not without risk.

Smart landowners simply post no-trespassing signs along the water’s edge hoping to discourage people ignorant of the law from using the river along their property. Aggressive landowners have taken to stringing wires across the river with “Keep Out” signs. Crazy landowners might assault people, brandish and even fire weapons, or commit other crimes in an effort to retain their squatter’s claim on a public resource.

Coloradans naturally respect private property rights but we’d remind recreation enthusiasts: to stay on the river, keep noise levels down, and not to litter, clean fish or go to the bathroom on the adjacent banks.

These rivers have not been purchased with the transfer of a land title or even the transfer of water rights. If a landowner holds some right to take some water from the Colorado River, that does not mean they own the entire river while it’s on their property. Common sense tells us this, as does the public trust doctrine.

Water use rights – irrigation, drinking, etc. — are secured by their own laws as spelled out in the Colorado Constitution in Article XVI. Nobody is trying to change those laws or change anyone’s rightful claim to use the water.

As Coloradans begin reclaiming their property, lawmakers can learn a lot by reading the excellent laws in Montana that cement the right to access waterways that flow through private lands. A new Colorado law rumored to be drafted for the 2025 legislative session should include these five key provisions modeled after the law in Montana:

1. Define “navigable” waters broadly to include waters that historically were used for log floating, fur trading, and mining and in the modern day can be used for recreational activities like rafting, kayaking, guided fishing or floating.

2. Landowners do not have to grant any easement for access to the waters, but cannot restrict access to the water from other public or private land.

3. A right to portage around barriers in water in the least intrusive manner possible without damaging property.

4.  A right to use the streambed as defined by the high-water mark of the river.

5. And finally, indemnity for landowners from any claim of harm that may come to people using the river or river bank or injured while accessing private property in an emergency.

Anything less than this would be a disservice to Coloradans.

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Researchers from Colorado School of Mines and Johns Hopkins University took samples from a stretch of Clear Creek in the city of Golden and compared them to an upstream location with relatively little tubing activity. In addition to the increase in bacteria, they found a higher concentration of metals, such as lead, suspended in the water.

The study, first reported by Denver 7, attributed the increase in metals to human activity stirring up the creek bed, where they had accumulated since Colorado’s mining days. The spike in intestinal bacteria suggests that at least some people tubing on the creek also used it as a bathroom.

The authors said the spikes resolved quickly following a high-use weekend, however. They didn’t assess the impact on plants or animal life.

Roger Hill hiked across federally managed public land to enter the river, donned his straw hat, and cast his dry-fly line along that privately owned stretch last weekend without incident. This week, he urged other anglers statewide to replicate his civil disobedience and assert a public right to fish and float on navigable rivers  — a freedom established in other western states.

It’s the latest twist in a fight that began in the summer of 2012 on this same stretch of the Arkansas River, just upriver from the confluence with Texas Creek near Cotopaxi. A landowner threw baseball-sized rocks at Hill, forcing him to leave.  A few years later, her husband fired shots at Hill’s friend. A retired physicist from Colorado Springs, Hill filed a lawsuit claiming a public right to wade on riverbeds — and won — until landowners, with support from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. High court judges in June 2023 dismissed Hill’s case, ruling that he lacked legal standing to proactively sue to establish a public right to wade in streams and rivers.

The ruling means Hill cannot advance his legal case unless he can raise the public access issue as a defense.

He had notified the Fremont County sheriff before he went fishing last Saturday, assuming an arrest or ticket for trespassing would give him the legal standing the state Supreme Court has required to have the core of his case heard.

“I didn’t catch a single fish and I’m pissed off that I wasn’t arrested,” Hill said. “Somebody’s got to do it…. Strength in numbers would help.”

“He needs to stop or suffer the consequences,” said James Gibson, an owner of property where Hill fished. “If he’s not breaking the law, there’s nothing to be done. I hope this gets settled.”

Fremont County Sheriff’s Cpl. Caleb Chase said the county would leave any enforcement to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, part of the state government. At CPW, a spokesman said the agency oversees fish but lacks jurisdiction over water and land adjacent to Colorado’s streams and rivers.

Colorado’s AG Weiser declined to comment.

Colorado authorities allow private ownership of riverbeds while other states, including Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada, treat rivers deemed “navigable” at statehood as public. But recreational activities, including fishing and whitewater rafting, increasingly play a primary role in the state’s economy and strain Colorado’s position as an outlier. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states hold ownership of navigable riverbeds in trust for the public. Public access has become a vexing issue as wealthy landowners purchase more property along the West’s mountain streams and rivers.

This time, Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers co-chairman Don Holmstrom joined Hill in fishing along the Arkansas, where trappers and railroad companies in the 1870s used the river for the commercial purposes of transporting pelts and tens of thousands of railroad ties.

“Roger Hill is a hero,” said Holmstrom, who has helped lobby for an intervention by Gov. Jared Polis to designate public-access waterways. The increasing buy-ups of riverside property in the West “makes it a fight for the public interest versus those wealthy landowners who are fighting against the public interest,” he said. “These are public pathways throughout the state that people should be able to enjoy — to fish, float and run the whitewater. ”

University of Colorado law professor Mark Squillace, who has helped represent Hill, said the state Supreme Court dismissal over legal standing misinterpreted well-established principles. “You don’t have to put yourself in harm’s way in order to test your legal rights.” He has criticized state leaders for siding with riverside landowners.

“People should exercise their right to use the beds of navigable streams,” Squillace said. “Unless we can get somebody arrested or ticketed, or something, we don’t have a way to get into court.”

Landowners said they were aware of Hill’s defiant fishing last weekend. They’d assumed the Supreme Court dismissal ended the fight.

“We own the river bottom,” said Earl Pfeiffer, a resident since 2010. “Essentially, what these guys are asking is that the state takes ownership of the land. If the government wants to take it, we have to figure out a way to be compensated for that. I would rather not deed it over to the state,” he said.

He and his wife enjoy sitting at their house just 35 feet above the water as it flows.

“It is entertaining for us to sit up on our deck and watch people fishing,” Pfeiffer said. “If people want to fish, we are not going to stop them – unless they are really rowdy, making a mess, throwing garbage. It would be great if they’d ask permission. We are not here to give anybody a hard time.”

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Thanks to livestream video, scientists studying the den on a craggy hillside in Colorado are learning more about these enigmatic — and often misunderstood — reptiles. They’re observing as the youngsters, called pups, slither over and between adult females on lichen-encrusted rocks.

The public can watch too on the Project RattleCam website and help with important work including how to tell the snakes apart. Since researchers put their remote camera online in May, several snakes have become known in a chatroom and to scientists by names including “Woodstock,” “Thea” and “Agent 008.”

The project is a collaboration between California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, snake removal company Central Coast Snake Services and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

By involving the public, the scientists hope to dispel the idea that rattlesnakes are usually fierce and dangerous. In fact, experts say they rarely bite unless threatened or provoked and often are just the opposite.

Rattlesnakes are not only among the few reptiles that care for their young. They even care for the young of others. The adults protect and lend body heat to pups from birth until they enter hibernation in mid-autumn, said Max Roberts, a CalPoly graduate student researcher.

“We regularly see what we like to call ‘babysitting,’ pregnant females that we can visibly see have not given birth, yet are kind of guarding the newborn snakes,” Roberts said Wednesday.

As many as 2,000 rattlesnakes spend the winter at the location on private land, which the researchers are keeping secret to discourage trespassers. Once the weather warms, only pregnant females remain while the others disperse to nearby territory.

This year, the scientists keeping watch over the Colorado site have observed the rattlesnakes coil up and catch water to drink from the cups formed by their bodies. They’ve also seen how the snakes react to birds swooping in to try to grab a scaly meal.

The highlight of summer is in late August and early September when the rattlesnakes give birth over a roughly two-week period.

“As soon as they’re born, they know how to move into the sun or into the shade to regulate their body temperature,” Roberts said.

There are 36 species of rattlesnakes, most of which inhabit the U.S. They range across nearly all states and are especially common in the Southwest. These being studied are prairie rattlesnakes, which can be found in much of the central and western U.S. and into Canada and Mexico.

Like other pit viper species but unlike most snakes, rattlesnakes don’t lay eggs. Instead, they give birth to live young. Eight is an average-size brood, with the number depending on the snake’s size, according to Roberts.

Roberts is studying how temperature changes and ultraviolet sunlight affect snake behavior. Another graduate student, Owen Bachhuber, is studying the family and social relationships between rattlesnakes.

The researchers watch the live feed all day. Beyond that, they’re getting help from as many as 500 people at a time who tune in online.

“We are interested in studying the natural behavior of rattlesnakes, free from human disturbance. What do rattlesnakes actually do when we’re not there?” Roberts said.

Now that the Rocky Mountain summer is cooling, some males have been returning. By November, the camera running on solar and battery power will be turned off until next spring, when the snakes will re-emerge from their “mega den.”

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Children’s Hospital Colorado postponed non-emergent surgeries through Tuesday out of an “abundance of caution” while hospital staff dealt with the issue that had reduced the facility’s sterile processing capacity since last week.

“This decision was made to ensure we have the capacity to sterilize the instruments and equipment needed for urgent and emergent cases,” said Rachael Fowler, a hospital spokesperson.

Staff at UCHealth’s University of Colorado Hospital on Thursday noticed tiny black flecks in some of their washers prior to sterilizing and after washing medical equipment, said Dan Weaver, a hospital spokesperson. Personnel immediately stopped using the equipment and began investigating the issue, he said.

The hospital postponed or moved at least 60 elective cases during the disruption, but continued to perform urgent and emergency procedures.

The sterile processing department was back online Monday and the black flecks were gone, Weaver said.

The Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center also postponed or moved surgeries due to similar water issues.

The hospital is limiting surgical and procedural cases to those performed with disposable instruments, said Janelle Beswick, a VA spokesperson. Eighteen cases have been postponed thus far.

Shonnie Cline, a spokesperson with Aurora Water, said hospitals told the agency on Friday that they noticed changes to their water.

City officials were still working to determine the cause and origin of the issue, she said. Water quality tests are meeting their standards, Cline said, and the city is not receiving complaints from elsewhere in the distribution network.

The sterilization issues come after the Aurora VA spent months dealing with its own sterilization issues. Hospital staff this spring noticed mysterious black flecks on surgical equipment, which tests later showed to be bits of plastic.

The VA hospital, during the investigation, was forced to cancel hundreds of surgeries and dental appointments.

State and federal inspection records show at least 16 Colorado hospitals have been cited for improper sterilization since 2019.

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The Post swept awards for Investigative Reporting with Shelly Bradbury and Elise Schmelzer taking first place for their story on how mass killers slip through Colorado’s safety net. Meg Wingerter and Seth Klamann placed second for their story about eating disorder patients alleging a Denver treatment center used punitive and threatening methods.

Megan Schrader, The Post’s opinion editor, was recognized with first-place awards for both her editorial writing and her serious column writing.

The Post also received first-place awards for its website, its page design and its newsletter, the Mile High Roundup.

Other first-place winners included:

Agricultural reporting: Tiney Ricciardi for a story on the challenges facing barley farmers. 

Breaking news: Elise Schmelzer, Bruce Finley and Jacob Factor for their coverage of the shooting that followed the NBA finals last year.

Crime and safety reporting: The investigative piece on serial killers won first place, while a story by Schmelzer and Klamann on people overdosing in public spaces was second.

Environmental story: RJ Sangosti, a Post photographer, won this award for his work on the Colorado River crisis. That work also won Sangosti and photo editor Patrick Traylor a first-place award for best slideshow or photo essay.

Sports photograph: AAron Ontiveroz was awarded for one of his photos of Jamal Murray.

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The Colorado Springs Fire Department responded to the reservoir east of Woodland Park late Saturday afternoon after witnesses reported seeing a man fall into the 62-degree water and disappear, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials said in a news release.

A dog on the paddleboard managed to stay afloat before eventually swimming to shore.

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife water rescue team used sonar and a remote-operate submersible to search the 500-acre reservoir and found the man’s body underwater at 1 a.m. Sunday.

His name will be released by the El Paso County Coroner’s Office.

This is at least the 30th water-related death in Colorado so far in 2024, state officials said in a news release.

“This is a tragedy and we offer our condolences to the family and friends of the victim,” CPW Boating Safety Manager Grant Brown said in a statement. “We’ve experienced far too many water deaths in Colorado. We urge everyone on or near the water to please wear a life jacket.”

Falling into water that cold can cause someone’s body to cramp and leave them unable to swim, Brown said.

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CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment comes as insurance companies increasingly rely on technology to help them determine how big the wildfire risk is across the United States and, in turn, how much they need to charge homeowners to cover those risks while still turning a profit.

The problem, according to consumer advocates and industry regulators, is these modeling systems do not account for all of the mitigation work being done to protect properties from fires. It’s a problem Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway is trying to solve.

“What the majority of them don’t do at all is incorporate state-level or community mitigation,” Conway said. “They have been telling homeowners they have to mitigate to keep insurance affordable and available. But if they’re not going to take that into account, that’s a very big problem.”

Colorado homeowners have seen their insurance costs escalate faster than the rest of the country because of wildfires and hailstorms, according to a 2023 Colorado Department of Insurance report that looked at rates between 2018 and 2022. At least one analysis found home insurance rates increased in the state by 19.8% between 2021 and 2023.

The increasing costs are not just impacting those whose homes are at risk of burning in a wildfire. Every property owner in Colorado will pay more so insurance companies can cover their risk when a catastrophe happens elsewhere in the state. That makes people’s monthly mortgage payments go up as most homeowner insurance is paid by their banks through escrow accounts.

The increase also affects renters as landlords will charge tenants more to pay for their expenses.

Those rising rates are being driven by increased wildfire risk — a result of a warming climate — and inflation, said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an advocacy group for consumers. But new technology that provides insurers with maps, graphics and piles of data also are contributing to enormous increases, she said.

The latest wildfire risk assessment was produced by CoreLogic, a tech company that creates risk assessments for wildfires and other natural disasters. But CoreLogic is just one of a handful of companies producing such assessments by using artificial intelligence, drones and mapping, Bach said.

For example, Verisk Analytics’ most recent analysis on the cost of home reconstruction after a disaster, which also is used by insurance underwriters, reported that Colorado had the second-highest increase in post-disaster reconstruction costs in the country, behind only New Hampshire. The cost to rebuild a house rose 9.05% in Colorado between July 2023 and July 2024, the analysis found. Colorado also had the second-highest jump — 11.57% — in rebuilding commercial properties.

“In the beginning, I thought it was climate change driven,” Bach said of rising homeowners insurance costs. “But now I believe it’s the tech factor that is equally causing a dramatic shift in the market.”

Wildland urban interface

CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment estimated that 2.6 million homes in the western United States are at least at moderate risk of burning in a wildfire, and the cost to rebuild those homes would exceed $1.2 trillion. Colorado ranked second with the most homes at risk while California was first and Texas was third, the assessment stated.

In Colorado, 68,928 properties in metro Denver are at risk along with 50,298 in the Colorado Springs area. Most of the homes in the state that are threatened by wildfire are in what insurance companies and firefighters call the wildland urban interface — in other words, houses built near open spaces or on the outskirts of mountain towns such as those that burned last month in the Stone Canyon fire near Lyons and the Alexander Mountain fire west of Loveland.

That growth around the wildland urban interface is contributing to rising insurance costs in Colorado.

Insurify, a digital insurance agent that compares quotes from more than 100 agencies, found that Colorado’s average annual home insurance rate is expected to increase by 7% to $4,367 in 2024 from $4,072 in 2023. In 2023, Colorado’s average home insurance rate was $1,695 higher than the national average.

Colorado’s continuing popularity and people’s desire to live near the mountains and foothills contribute to the state’s high ranking in the CoreLogic report, said Jamie Knippen, a senior product manager for the company. Since 2010, the number of homes built in Colorado in the wildland urban interface has increased 45%, she said.

“So as people have moved and development has increased within these areas, risk has also grown just due to the number of homes and the value of those homes,” Knippen said.

CoreLogic started producing the wildfire risk assessment in 2019 to help insurance companies figure out the risk they would take on when selling policies to homeowners in different areas of the country, Knippen said. The company also writes risk assessments for hurricanes and floods in other parts of the U.S.

The company wants to report accurate data so insurance companies and the general public understand risks, Knippen said. The risk assessment should start conversations about the perils homeowners face and how they can be taken into consideration when it comes to decisions such as buying a new house or protecting the ones people already have.

Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, said the various data reports generated by tech companies are really reflecting what insurance companies already know — hot, dry weather in Colorado is increasing the chances of wildfires and still people are building expensive homes in the mountains.

She disputed arguments that the various analyses cause rates to go up.

“What it really does is provide accuracy, first and foremost, for what your risk is,” Walker said.

Modeling isn’t new

Computer modeling for wildfire risk is fairly new to the industry, Walker said.

It is much more sophisticated than years ago when a homeowner would talk with their insurance agent about how far they lived from the nearest fire station and where fire hydrants were located in neighborhoods. Now, drones, satellite imagery and other data points can help analyze the slope on which a home is built, the vegetation around the house, construction materials and, yes, the distance to the closest fire station.

Those models also are helping with the science of mitigation, which is an increasingly big part of reducing wildfire risk, she said.

That means homeowners do as much as they can to reduce the chances their houses will burn in a wildfire. It involves everything from upgrading roofs to moving wooden fences farther from houses to clear-cutting dense brush around the perimeters of homes.

But that’s where the fight is centered. If insurance companies are going to ask homeowners to mitigate risk, then the homeowners should receive discounts for that work, Conway said.

So far, the risk analyses and modeling programs that insurance companies rely on are not taking into account all that work, he said.

For example, Colorado deployed a Firehawk helicopter for the first time to fight blazes that sparked this summer in Boulder, Jefferson and Larimer counties. The state’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control also has airplanes to map fires and carry water and retardants to extinguish them. Those aviation assets saved valuable property.

But the state and its homeowners do not get credit in risk assessments for those airplanes and the helicopter, Conway said.

The models also don’t take into account all the work that communities such as Boulder County have done to help reduce the level of destruction a wildfire can cause. For example, Boulder County collected $8.9 million last year through a sales tax dedicated to wildfire mitigation that funds projects such as using goats to graze on open space in Superior.

The same fight is happening in California, Bach said. It’s impossible to put the “tech genie back in the bottle,” so it is up to regulators like Conway to push the tech companies to change their models and predictions so mitigation efforts are included in the assessments, she said.

“That is the fight,” Bach said. “From my perspective as a consumer advocate, if you’re charging someone who has mitigated the same rate as someone who hasn’t, then you’re overcharging.”

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