Sweetwater Lake community fed up with park plans; U.S. Forest Service moves forward with environmental review
Hugh Carey/The Colorado Sun/Courtesy photo
The 13 meetings over the past eight months between Sweetwater community members and the U.S. Forest Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife were meant to hammer out a rough draft plan for the proposed new state park at Sweetwater Lake.
As USFS prepares to enter a formal environmental review of what could happen at Sweetwater Lake in Garfield County, there is no plan and little agreement. There is a lot of frustration.
“We have a choice. We are either going to manage it before everyone comes, or we are going to manage it after the chaos,” White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said Tuesday at the final meeting between the agencies and a Sweetwater community group in Eagle. “No matter what, it’s going to get discovered.”
He was frustrated Tuesday night. So were the members of the community. Perhaps it was fitting that in the final moments of the last meeting with the Sweetwater Lake Working Group, the lights in the Eagle conference room went dark.
The Sweetwater community doesn’t want the state to manage their quiet corner of Colorado. They really don’t want CPW to call Sweetwater Lake a “state park.” When Gov. Jared Polis stood atop a rocky outcropping over the lake in October 2021 and announced a unique partnership between CPW and the White River National Forest, he said the lake had been saved.
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Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun — jason@coloradosun.com Email: jason@coloradosun.com Twitter: @jasonblevins
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