Public Input Sought to Address Challenges at Elk Meadow Park Dog Off-leash Area

Jeffco Open Space is asking for public input at an upcoming three-part community meeting series regarding the popular Elk Meadow Park Dog Off-leash Area (DOLA) located in Evergreen, Colorado. The DOLA is experiencing many challenges that affect public health and the environment.

Join the conversation at the first community meeting on Thursday, January 19, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the Buchanan Recreation Center, 32003 Ellingwood Trail, Evergreen, Colorado, 80439. Attendees will receive a briefing on the challenges facing the DOLA, and then will have the opportunity to brainstorm solutions with other residents and Jeffco Open Space staff.

The challenges the DOLA is facing include:

1. Harmful Stream Water Quality – In 2016, testing revealed that the stream water at the DOLA has extremely high levels of bacterial contamination - exceeding state limits by as much as 20x. This contamination is unsafe for humans and their pets.

2. Excessive Dog Waste – Since September 2016, more than 500 pounds of dog waste has been removed at the DOLA during three volunteer cleanup events. Due to their diets, dog waste does not biodegrade like wildlife waste. Left alone, dog waste pollutes groundwater and often contains harmful bacteria and organisms like E. coli, Giardia, Salmonella, roundworms, hookworms and Cryptosporidium. These can be passed on to people and pets through ingestion, or on the bottoms of shoes and paws.

3. Vegetation Loss and Stream Embankment Damage – The high impact of trampling by approximately 4,000 visitors per week has led to the loss of vegetation, severe soil erosion and stream bank degradation.

4. Pedestrian and Dog Safety – In spite of numerous management actions taken, illegal parking and dogs and pedestrians in the roadway create unsafe conditions for motorists, visitors and pets.

The three-part community meeting series will continue into February with meetings on Thursday, February 9 and Thursday, February 23. Interested citizens are encouraged to attend all three meetings. Updates and information from each meeting will be available on the Jeffco Open Space website: jeffco.us/open-space/meetings-agendas/projects-proposals/

Jeffco Open Space was founded as a land conservation organization in 1972. Our mission is to preserve open space and parkland, protect park and natural resources, and provide healthy, nature-based experiences. Funded with a one-half of one percent sales tax, our organization contributes to city and park district projects, has preserved more than 54,000 acres, and manages 28 open space parks and more than 230 miles of trails in Jefferson County, Colorado.

Matt Robbins
Community Connections Manager
303-271-5902
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Dog waste and traffic are forcing a major rethink of Elk Meadow, Colorado’s greatest dog park
Andrew Kenney
Posted on January 10, 2017

I have seen doggy heaven. It’s about 40 minutes west of Denver.

This is a place where you, a dog, can run unbridled for miles. You can tear through the underbrush and weave through the trees, up the steep hillsides and down through the meadows, where you can leap through the snow and roll in the creek.

Unfortunately, so can several thousand of your friends, and it’s getting to be a burden. Jefferson County has called three community meetings to address the environmental impacts and traffic issues that have come with the massive popularity of Elk Meadow Dog Off-Leash Area, a hundred-acre canine bonanza in Evergreen.

“There’s been lots of talk of us just going in and blindly closing the park. It’s certainly one management approach, but it’s not one we would like to take,” said Matt Robbins, communications manager for Jeffco Open Space. “We would like to provide public engagement. We want these folks to hear what we’re doing and hear from them.”

The issues:

• Dog Waste
• Vegetation Destruction
• Vehicle Traffic

Edit to update:
"Due to the amount of snow that remains on the ground at Elk Meadow and the chance for precipitation on Friday, we will be rescheduling our cleanup day to January 28th, from 9am-12pm. Thank you and we hope to see you all tonight."

From Friends of Elk Meadow Park DOLA :
It's almost that time again! See you all on January 21st for our monthly cleanup, 9am-12pm. A BIG shout out to Craig Hammer of DoodyCalls for donating scoopers and rakes to the cause!

Don't forget the first of our series of community meetings is tonight at 6pm at Buchanan Rec Center. We hope you will join us.

The community presentation is uploaded here if you'd like to see the powerpoint: jeffco.us/open-space/meetings-agendas/projects-proposals/

The next meeting will be February 9th.

Users of off-leash area brainstorm solutions for Elk Meadow dog park

Close to 200 Jeffco residents, canine lovers and regular Elk Meadow off-leash area patrons attended a community meeting last week to discuss potential solutions to the many problems facing the popular dog park in Evergreen.

The meeting lasted two hours and ended with small-group discussions that yielded potential solutions ranging from more proactive education and providing additional amenities — such as more plastic-bag stations for dog waste — to public shaming and prohibiting use by out-of-county residents, notably dog owners from Denver.

In 2013, Jeffco Open Space commissioned a traffic study of Stagecoach at the marked crosswalk linking the parking lot to the dog park. That study, which took place Tuesday, June 11, 2013, showed 3,395 cars drove past the Elk Meadow dog park during a 24-hour span. Nearly two-thirds, or 2,106, of the drivers were traveling more than 10 mph over the posted 40-mph speed limit, the study showed. There was an audible gasp when Robbins pointed out that 20 of those speeders were clocked driving in excess of 80 mph.

Vegetation loss from overuse was another theme of the meeting, as were stream water-quality issues from dog waste.

Conducted between March and October of last year, the water quality study involved collecting samples from two locations, including where the stream enters and exits the dog park. Samples taken from the latter showed that between the beginning of July through the end of September, there were 2,419 coliform units of E. coli per milliliter of stream water. For comparison, Duggan said the EPA quality standard for water used for recreational purposes is 126 coliform units per milliliter.

“The meter we used can’t go any higher than that,” Pool said when asked how the study yielded the same 2,419 result for three consecutive months. “We don’t know exactly how much E. coli was in the stream when we took those samples. We essentially broke the meter.”

Subscribe and read more here: www.canyoncourier.com/content/users-leas...-elk-meadow-dog-park

Please join us tonight for our 2nd of 3 community meetings about the Elk Meadow Dog Off Leash area issues.



Join the conversation at the second community meeting at the Buchanan Recreation Center, 32003 Ellingwood Trail, Evergreen, Colorado, 80439.

The challenges the DOLA is facing include:

1. Harmful Stream Water Quality – In 2016, testing revealed that the stream water at the DOLA has extremely high levels of bacterial contamination - exceeding state limits by as much as 20x. This contamination is unsafe for humans and their pets.

2. Excessive Dog Waste – Since September 2016, more than 500 pounds of dog waste has been removed at the DOLA during three volunteer cleanup events. Due to their diets, dog waste does not biodegrade like wildlife waste. Left alone, dog waste pollutes groundwater and often contains harmful bacteria and organisms like E. coli, Giardia, Salmonella, roundworms, hookworms and Cryptosporidium. These can be passed on to people and pets through ingestion, or on the bottoms of shoes and paws.

3. Vegetation Loss and Stream Embankment Damage – The high impact of trampling by approximately 4,000 visitors per week has led to the loss of vegetation, severe soil erosion and stream bank degradation.

4. Pedestrian and Dog Safety – In spite of numerous management actions taken, illegal parking and dogs and pedestrians in the roadway create unsafe conditions for motorists, visitors and pets.

The three-part community meeting series will continue on Thursday, February 23. Interested citizens are encouraged to attend all three meetings. Updates and information from each meeting will be available on the Jeffco Open Space
website: jeffco.us/open-space/meetings-agendas/projects-proposals/

Evergreen’s Elk Meadow dog park likely to undergo full closure
Jeffco Open Space officials: ‘This land needs time to heal’
By Joe Moylan
Friday, February 10, 2017 at 12:23 am (Updated: February 10, 4:41 pm)

Dozens of the 154 people who attended Thursday’s community meeting about the Elk Meadow Dog Off-Leash Area stormed out early while mumbling expletives under their breath after learning from Jeffco Open Space officials that closing the popular dog park in Evergreen is all but a foregone conclusion.

“Jeffco Open Space didn’t create this situation; it’s the park’s popularity and user behavior that did,” said Jeffco Open Space Executive Director Tom Hoby after being asked if the agency had already decided to close the Elk Meadow dog park. “This isn’t about us. This land needs a rest. The condition we’ve created during the last five years is going to take at least three years to repair.”

“We can write 100 parking tickets over a summer, we can charge fees, we can educate the public about dog waste, and we can staff the park with people who can issue citations for not cleaning up after your dog, but these are all symptoms of a much larger problem, and none of these things does anything to improve the land,” Robbins said. “The fact of the matter is we’re losing here. This land is lost. It’s being loved to death. It’s already gone in so many capacities. It needs a break.”

Despite letting the veritable cat out of the bag, Robbins said Jeffco Open Space plans to move forward with its third and final Elk Meadow community meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, at the Buchanan Rec Center in Evergreen. Jeffco Open Space officials will present their action plan for the park, including ecological restoration and management, as well as outline future volunteer opportunities.

From Suzanne Richards in the Elk Meadow DOLA group :

I would like to share a post from another site. It is imperative that we make our voices heard. Many of us feel it is time to draft a petition, get signatures, and deliver it to our local commissioners.

Save The Evergreen Dog Park
Jeffco Open Space is planning to permanently close the Evergreen area off-leash dog park. My goal is to convince Jeffco Open Space to leave a portion of the dog park open and allow us dog owners to come up with viable solutions to the challenges only recently disclosed. The challenges are opportunities in disguise. The solutions we develop can be replicated across the state of Colorado. Only with the dog park open can we come up with viable solutions.

Jeffco Open Space held a community meeting on February 9, 2017. Despite the characterization of this meeting as one for public input, apparently, a decision had already been made to close this unique off-leash park.

My issue with Jeffco Open Space is only one – The failure to let us know how serious the situation was, in their mind, until it was, in their opinion, too late to do anything about it. It is not the rangers’ fault that park goers have not followed the rules and truly appreciated what a gift this park is to the community. It is not the rangers’ job to be our mothers and tell us to pick up after ourselves. It is our job to respect the open space and police ourselves. Again, my only issue with Jeffco is the failure to say anything until they felt the park must be closed. We deserve an opportunity to find a solution.

I respectfully disagree with the conclusion that the entire dog park must be permanently closed. I do agree that a portion of the dog park must be closed temporarily as we, the users of this wonderful park, come up with viable solutions. To do that, a portion of the park must remain open after a period of rest that I suggest begin now and conclude on June 15, 2017.

Jeffco Open Space argues that the entire park must be closed to allow for reforestation/regeneration of the plant life. Again, I respectfully disagree. The upper loop could remain open after allowing 3 months in the Spring for plant life to take hold. This is based upon my many years in the park and actual observations. And if I am wrong, all we have lost is a year. In the big scheme of a permanent closure, a year is nothing.
During this period of rest, we have a lot of work to do. In conjunction with Jeffco Open Space, we must come up with viable ways to accomplish the following:
1. Limit use to a level that the environment can sustain and is safe.
2. Regulate that use in a fair manner.
3. Educate park goers about their responsibilities while in the park.
4. Ensure that park goers comply with their responsibilities.

I have some specific ideas about how we can accomplish these goals. However, that is not the purpose of this post. If I post specifics, then we get into arguments about why what I (or you) propose won’t work. The purpose of this post is to obtain the opportunity to try. A genuine and sincere opportunity.
Park goers must change how they view their responsibility while in the park. This is a significant change in attitude. This is not just about what your dog does, what you do, and whether you pick up after your dog. It is about taking responsibility to ensure the park stays open.

We have one more meeting on February 23, 2017 and one last chance to save the park. Our goals must be concise. I suggest the single message we send to Jeffco Open Space is we accept the responsibility to come up with solutions to the challenges. Our issue with Jeffco Open Space is the failure to give us that opportunity, and please don’t try to tell us that the world will come to an end if we leave the upper loop open after a period of rest and the development of a viable plan. If we get into the specifics about what we, individually, think is the solution may be, we lose. The truth is we don’t currently have a solution BECAUSE we have not had the opportunity to address the challenges we now know we face. A viable solution will take time and significant effort.

OK, now share this to death and let’s see how many people we can get at the February 23 meeting. I’m not much on Twitter, but maybe the hashtag is #savethedogpark.
Douglas Turner
www.douglasturner.com/

Two messages from the Friends of Elk Meadow Park DOLA group :

Please join us tomorrow 2/18 at the Dog Park from 8a-12p for our monthly cleanup. Let's show JeffCo Open Space that we are willing to take care of our Park. See you there!

and

SAVE OUR DOG PARK RALLY
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23rd 5pm
Buchanan Recreation Center
32003 Ellingwood Trail Evergreen, CO

JeffCo Open Space held two meetings asking for input on public health and environmental challenges at the Elk Meadow Dog Off Leash Dog Park. We believe they had already decided to close our park.

As responsible dog owners, dog park volunteers, residents and taxpayers, we demand that our voices be heard and that we be included in the search for solutions and decisions regarding our park.

Join us before the JeffCo meeting to show our determination to keep our park open. Bring signs and well-behaved dogs to show our commitment to working together to keep our park open!