The Lee Fire is now 99% contained in Rio Blanco County. Since August 2, 2025, it has burned 137,758 acres, making it Colorado’s fourth-largest wildfire in state history.
Now, local officials are turning their attention to post-fire impacts. They estimate that over 80% of Rio Blanco County’s economy is natural resources-based, meaning the Lee Fire has impacted most sectors.
“Whether it’s grazing, whether it’s outfitting, whether it’s oil and gas, whether it’s natural soda,” said Reece Melton, Rio Blanco County’s natural resource director. “You could put those in those big baskets: ag, wildlife, energy.”
He said the county has already seen impacts in the burned area, especially with heavy rains in late August that caused flooding and mudslides. There will also likely be greater impacts to the area’s watershed.
“There’s very heavy concerns for drinking water in Rangely, via the White River, and we’re already seeing some impacts with that,” he said.
Western Colorado received much-needed rain in late August, in the midst of a prolonged and intense drought (currently, all of Rio Blanco County is in what the U.S. Drought Monitor calls extreme drought, though in August it reached the highest level of drought: exceptional). The National Weather Service has issued flash flood warnings in the burned area of Rio Blanco County several times, advising people to avoid the burn scar.
Erin Walter, the service hydrologist for the NWS’s Grand Junction Office, said they tend to err on the side of caution when issuing flash flood warnings in recently burned areas.
“Until we start to see some heavy rain and how that actually reacts, we don’t always know the answer, because every fire is so unique,” she said. “Every drainage is different, the vegetation it’s burned through is not going to be consistent from fire to fire. So there’s still a lot of unknown.”
But Melton said there have already been residents whose properties have been affected by flooding following the rain.
He said because so much of the county is public land, (According to Melton, 75% of Rio Blanco County is federally managed) there’s a lot of collaboration between different agencies, but ultimately, their goals are the same.
“How do we re-veg? How do we protect our watersheds? How do we replace essential infrastructure, whether that be powerlines, fences, so on and so forth? When can we go back in to utilize different grazing resources that’s good for the lessees but also good for the land? And we’re all going to have to collaborate.”
Rio Blanco County is working with other government entities and non-profits to assess post-fire damage, and make a plan to move forward. Melton said that includes Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, and its Emergency Watershed Protection program, as well as the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM is currently working on its Burned Area Emergency Response, or BAER, report for the Lee Fire. In addition, Melton said the White River Conservation District is working to gather data on fire impacts, as well as working on water quality monitoring for the White River.
But, Melton said, it’s important to keep in mind that even though the fire had a significant economic impact, as well as impacts to landscape health, it wasn’t all doom and gloom.
“After doing a little bit of looking and assessing the damage, there are areas where this fire might have been favorable for the rangeland to recover,” he said. “We know fire can be favorable from an ecological perspective, for rangeland recovery, as long as it’s not too severe.”
Much of Colorado’s landscape has been fire-adapted in some way, meaning that it needs some level of fire to stay healthy. In the case of the Lee Fire, firefighters observed that part of the reason for its rapid spread was that so much of Rio Blanco County had not seen fire in a long time, making fuels very continuous.
“Fire in Western Colorado, not to mention the Western United States, is not going away,” Melton said. “The conversation has to be, ‘how can we increase the resiliency of our landscapes?’ And ‘how can we be mindful of mitigation that can take place moving forward to minimize the impact of these events?’”
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
