WESTCREEK — Pushing to accelerate nature’s healing, the U.S. Forest Service is deploying contract labor crews who this week began planting 146,000 more pine and fir trees — an effort to stabilize wildfire-ravaged mountainsides that slump into metro Denver water supplies.
But every new catastrophic wildfire adds to the blackened-dead acreage west of Colorado’s Front Range cities. And water providers face increasing costs — which are passed to residents in monthly water bills — as more eroding sediment descends across burned watershed and clogs reservoirs.
A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
