Allenspark Wind Article for December 2025
Roger Sherman

The Tahosa Valley Landowners Association hopes that folks have looked at the draft Community Wildfire Protection Plan for the Allenspark Fire District.  Though the public comment period has passed, feedback is always welcome.  The whole idea is that the CWPP is a “living” document, that is, that it can be updated as new information, circumstances and even technology become available.  It should be a guide that adapts to changes on the ground, in philosophy or in resources.  It should evolve as the landscape evolves.

If you find it daunting – it is.  One suggestion is to print out the glossary so it is easy to look up the acronyms that contribute to the “wonkyness”.  But hopefully having an up to date CWPP will help and accelerate fire mitigation efforts. 

On the 30th of October there was a Larimer County Town Hall put on by Commissioner Jody Shadduck-McNalley, “Wildfires and Watershed”.  It featured presentation from Michael Conway, Colorado Insurance Commissioner, Matt McCombs, State Forester, Josh Roberts, Office of Emergency Management and Dakota Condon of Wildfire Partners of Larimer County.

The main speaker was Michael Conway who addressed the crises in homeowners insurance in Colorado, especially in the urban/wildlands interface.  He was candid about the Colorado Insurance of Last Resort as too expensive and not very good.  But he also felt that insurers were not taking mitigation, individual, county and state efforts into consideration.  Besides fire danger the biggest driving force in insurance cost statewide was hail – paid for even by people who did not live in hail prone areas. He also thought insurers were not giving credit for fire resistant roofs.  Look for more initiatives coming out of his office.

Matt McCombs spoke eloquently about seeing mitigation efforts as not just negative, not just removing trees, but as a new paradigm and “change in the nature of the landscape”.  It is not just the decade long drought but an understanding that we are the disturbance so we must continue consciously to adapt though proscribed fire plans, but also nursery expansion and reforestation.  Josh Roberts enumerated a few large mitigation grants for the Big Thompson Canyon, Glen Haven and Estes Valley. And Dakota Condon mentioned that homeowners could have their mitigation efforts assessed and get Silver or Gold certificates to send to their insurance Companies.  Commissioner Shadduck-McNalley finished by musing about how to raise the 450 million dollars needed over ten years to treat the county at $4000/acre. 

It was good to hear that people are working on these things though the title of the Town Hall reiterated what one member has said in the past, that things get serious when water is involved.