Amid a historically hot and dry winter, the Colorado Department of Transportation will repurpose $12 million in unused snowplow funds for summertime wildfire mitigation efforts along the state’s highways.

CDOT Deputy Director of Operations Bob Fifer told the Colorado Transportation Commission at its work session this month that amid a record-low snowpack statewide, the transportation department is shifting its strategy to proactively address wildfire risk.

“It just doesn’t look good for us,” Fifer said at the March 18 meeting. “We are expecting a drought across the state.”

Almost the entire state saw snowfall totals well-below average this past winter, Fifer said. Most years, the state’s snowpack doesn’t peak until April, but this year the snowpack has already peaked and has melted off rapidly, he said.

According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor report, more than half the state is experiencing severe drought, Level 2 of 4, with the northwest corner of Colorado experiencing extreme drought, or Level 3 of 4, and parts of Summit, Grand, Eagle, Routt, Garfield and Pitkin counties facing exceptional drought, or Level 4 of 4.

By June, Colorado’s Western Slope — including the Interstate 70 mountain corridor — is expected to be at above-average risk of significant wildland fires, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

To determine where to focus the highway vegetation management, Fifer said the transportation department will leverage a Colorado State Forest Service Wildfire Risk Map to target roadside mitigation to the areas of the state that have the highest probability of burning.

“When you have 9,000 miles, or 24,000 lane miles, of road, where do you start mitigation?” Fifer asked. “What’s the most surgical area? How can we do it to get the most bang for the limited dollars we have? We’re going to use this data to drive that decision-making and we’re going to start with the most vulnerable areas.”

After choosing priority areas, Fifer said the transportation department will remove diseased trees and trees that are 50% dead or more, especially within the first 15 feet of the right-of-way. He said most of the wood will be chipped and slashed, then left on site to decompose, while larger blocks and diseased trees will be removed.

Ladder fuels, like lower branches, that could carry a fire up into the crown of the forest, will also be removed from trees within the right-of-way, Fifer said. He said stumps will be cut to about 4 inches off the ground.

In addition to their importance as evacuation routes, Fifer noted that “the highways are natural fire lines or fire breaks” that can help slow the spread of wildfires and that firefighters can use to strategically hold the fire at bay.

CDOT Deputy Director of Maintenance Jim Fox told the Transportation Commission that crews typically mow the right-of-way along the state’s highways twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall.

So far this fiscal year, which began last July, Fox said the transportation department has already completed nearly 28,000 swath miles of roadside mowing, or slightly more than it did in the previous one-year period. He said the transportation department has also removed 3,848 trees from the right-of-way so far this fiscal year, compared to 2,453 trees in the previous fiscal year.

CDOT Director of Maintenance and Operations Shawn Smith noted that the $12 million in snow and ice contingency funds that are left over from the winter, due to the low snowfall, are among the dollars that will help fund the increased roadside wildfire mitigation.

Although the transportation department already has some funds to dedicate toward increasing roadside wildfire mitigation, Fifer said, “We’ll probably need more to handle this.”

He did not provide an estimate for what the additional wildfire mitigation might cost.

DENVER — Five of the seven law enforcement officers in a rural Colorado county, including the sheriff, have been indicted in an investigation into allegations of misconduct, prosecutors said Friday.

A grand jury indicted Costilla County Sheriff Danny Sanchez and former Deputy Keith Schultz on charges of allegedly mishandling human remains discovered in October 2024, according to court documents. A man who found the remains and reported them to the sheriff’s office said Sanchez and Schultz took only the skull and left the other remains behind, including teeth, court documents state.

Two months passed before Schultz wrote a report, saying he left bones in a bag on his desk and went on another call, the documents state. A coroner’s official said he received the skull in an unlabeled paper bag from the sheriff’s office, the documents state.

Separately, Undersheriff Cruz Soto, Sgt. Caleb Sanchez — the sheriff’s son — and Deputy Roland Riley are charged in connection with the use of a Taser against a man who was suffering a mental health crisis in February and tried to leave when they insisted he go to the hospital, according to the documents. The man said he was “roughed up” by deputies and was left with broken ribs, according to the indictments.

Soto was charged with failing to intervene and third-degree assault, according to court documents. Caleb Sanchez and Riley were charged with second- and third-degree assault.

In announcing the indictments, 12th District Attorney Anne Kelly said she’s committed to investigating and prosecuting crimes no matter the offender.

“I cannot and will not ignore violations of the trust that a community should have in their police. No citizen of the San Luis Valley should have any doubts about the integrity of their police force,” Kelly said at a news conference Friday evening.

A person who answered the phone Friday at the sheriff’s office said it had no immediate comment but planned to post a statement online. Phone numbers listed for Danny Sanchez, Soto and Riley did not work. Caleb Sanchez did not have a listed number. An unidentified person who answered a number for Schultz referred The Associated Press to an attorney, Peter Comar. The AP left a message Friday for Comar seeking comment.

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As a result of a snow drought and a heat wave that have both set records, some Colorado residents face the earliest restrictions on their water use ever imposed.

Denver Water announced Wednesday that it is seeking a 20% cut in water use, asking people to turn off automatic watering systems until mid-May and restricting the watering of trees and shrubs to twice a week.

“The situation is quite serious,” said Todd Hartman, a spokesperson for the utility. “We’re in such a dire situation that we could be coming back to the public in two or three months and saying you’re limited to one day a week.”

It is the earliest in the year that Denver Water has ever issued a restriction, Hartman said.

Colorado’s snowpack peaked at extremely low levels on March 12 — nearly a month earlier than usual — then cratered during the recent heat wave that cooked nearly every state in the West.

“We already had the lowest snowpack we’ve seen since at least 1981, and now, with the heat wave conditions, we’ve already lost about 40% of the statewide snowpack” since the March 12 peak, said Peter Goble, Colorado’s assistant state climatologist. “Conditions are looking more like late April or early May.”

The water restrictions are a harbinger of what’s to come in many Western states as officials try to manage widespread drought concerns. Nearly every snow basin in the Mountain West had one of its warmest winters on record and is well behind normal when it comes to water supply, according to the U.S. drought monitor. The dwindling snowpack is likely to raise the risk of severe wildfires, hamper electricity generation at hydropower dams and force water restrictions for farmers.

Hartman said nearly every community east of the Rockies, along Colorado’s front range, is in much the same boat as Denver.

City Council members in Aurora are considering similar water restrictions; reservoirs there stand at about 58%, according to the city’s website. In the town of Erie, officials declared a water shortage emergency on March 20 after they observed a massive spike in consumption.

Gabi Rae, a spokesperson for the town, said Erie was perilously close to having taps run dry because so many residents had started watering their lawns early amid the unseasonable heat.

“We were a day away from running out of water. That’s why it was such an emergency,” she said.

Erie officials demanded that residents stop using irrigation systems altogether.

Goble said this month’s heat wave has set records in every corner of Colorado, sometimes by double digits.

“I can’t remember seeing a single heat wave that broke this many records, and seeing it across such a large portion of the country is certainly eye-popping,” he said, adding: “I’m located in Fort Collins, and we got up to 91 last Saturday. The previous record for March was 81, so we smashed that record. And it wasn’t just one day, either.”

Denver Water, which serves about 1.5 million residents in the city and its surrounding suburbs, gets about half of its water from the Upper Colorado River Basin and the South Platte River Basin. The latter’s snowpack was at about 42% of normal Tuesday, the utility reported. The Upper Colorado River Watershed was at 55%.

Systemwide, Denver Water’s reservoirs are about 80% full, which is only about 5 percentage points lower than in a typical year.

“That sounds pretty good,” Hartman said. “Except that what we’re not going to be able to rely on is that rush of water that will bring those reservoirs back up, because the snowpack is so low.”

In other words, the snowpack — a natural water reservoir — is mostly tapped already and won’t replenish reservoirs later this spring and into summer, when runoff usually peaks.

In Erie, city workers plan to aggressively police water use until sometime next week using smart meters that monitor residential usage. Rae said the city is also sending utility workers to patrol neighborhoods and look for sprinklers that are turned on.

“People have been kind of annoyed with how aggressive we were, and I don’t necessarily think they understand the ramifications if we weren’t,” Rae said. “It is an actual serious emergency situation. We were so close to reaching empty, there would literally be no water coming out of the taps — hospitals, schools, fire hydrants, your home would have no water.”

Although the limits on outdoor watering will be lifted soon, Rae expects more restrictions later this spring and summer.