Longmont’s City Council on Tuesday heard another round of appeals from prairie-dog protection advocates calling on the city to do whatever is possible to prevent extermination of a southeast Longmont prairie dog colony.
Jeremy Gregory said that “we’ve made quite a bit of progress” in recent weeks toward “a real viable solution” for “a non-lethal action” that would relocate the prairie dogs instead of poisoning or exterminating them.
Susan Sommers said prairie-dog advocates “have a very viable chance to do the right thing.”
Anna Rivas told the council: “I hope you seriously consider the viable options” to extermination “that are available.” And Sarah Vanderwall said she hopes the prairie dogs will “be relocated safely and successfully.”
At issue: The fates of 100 or so prairie dogs on about a 2.5-acre parcel owned by HSW Land LLC on the southwest corner of East Third Avenue and Great Western Drive, west of the Mill Village Planned Unit Development.
That vacant property is to be the site of what’s being called the Great Western Flex Building, an office and high-bay warehouse facility.
The organization Prairie Protection Colorado has contended that the developers — HSW and its contractor, Sun Construction and Facility Services Inc. — have not been adequately complying with a city development-code requirement that it make “a good faith effort” to come up with a plan to relocate the prairie dogs before proceeding with steps to exterminate the animals.
As recently as Monday morning, Prairie Protection Colorado complained on Facebook that the developers “have made it clear to PPC that they have absolutely NO intention of making any kind of good faith effort to relocate these prairie dogs. It is our fear that they will try to exterminate at the end of this week or sometime next week.”
Deanna Meyer, Prairie Protection Colorado’s executive director, charged in a Monday telephone interview that Longmont — at that point — had failed to answer many of her organization’s questions about what the city has been doing to enforcing the good-faith, relocation-effort requirement.
“The council and the city have been completely unresponsive,” Meyer said on Monday morning.
But Andy Welch, president of Sun Construction and a minority stakeholder in HSW, said the developers remain open to the possibility of relocating the prairie dogs on the 2.5-acre parcel, as well as prairie dogs living on about 10 other now-vacant adjacent acres expected to be the sites of future development. However, that’s if suitable habitat could be found to become the new homes for those prairie dogs, the owners of those receiving properties agree and if it could be done at a reasonable cost and time frame.
“Nobody’s gassing prairie dogs next week,” Welch said in a Tuesday afternoon telephone interview. He accused prairie-dog activists of having spread “flat-out lies and misconceptions” about the developers’ plans.
“We don’t have a preference” among the possible options of relocating the prairie dogs, donating them as food for animals in a black-footed ferret recovery program or the birds in a raptor rehabilitation program, or — as a last resort — euthanizing them on the southwest Longmont property.
“We don’t desire to kill prairie dogs,” Welch said. As for the city code requirements for what the developer must try to do about the animals prior to exterminating them, “We’ve been diligently doing that for the last couple of months.”
Longmont city officials, meanwhile, emphasized that they’re still a ways away from getting the documents about what HSW has investigated before ruling on whether the developers have exhausted possibilities before seeking city permission to exterminate the colony.
Joni Marsh, Longmont’s planning and development services director, said in a Monday email: “The city has not authorized any process to date in regard to the prairie dogs at this site. We have not received the requisite documentation.
“I do not have a date as to when that will be submitted. Staff requested that the documentation outlining of all efforts made by the developer to be submitted in writing and then we will review, via a third party, prior to any final determination of action,” Marsh said.
“I would anticipate that taking some time, depending upon when we receive the information requested.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Meyer said Marsh told Prairie Protection Colorado that the developers had not yet submitted the necessary documents for the city’s review and a decision about the prairie dog colony’s future is not imminent.
“I do feel a lot better today,” Meyer said. “I feel like a little bit of a weight lifted off.”
Welch said both Boulder County and Longmont have told HSW and its consultant that neither of those local governments has suitable habitat available on its open space to receive the numbers of prairie dogs that would have to be relocated from HSW’s overall 12 acres, including the Great Western Flex Building site and the adjacent properties.
He said that HSW has gotten approval to trap and take most of the prairie dogs on the 2.5-acre site to a raptor feeding program.
Meyer said, however, that her organization has found a receiving site — the federal Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge that once was the home of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility.
Meyer reported that David Lucas, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife manager of the refuge, recently said all the prairie dogs on HSW’s southeast Longmont properties could be relocated to Rocky Flats as early as this fall.
Meyer, a Douglas County resident, said Prairie Protection Colorado has proposed temporarily relocating the Great Western Flex 2.5-acre parcel’s prairie dogs onto HSW’s adjacent land and then relocating all the hundreds of prairie dogs now inhabiting the entire 12 acres to Rocky Flats.
Welch said HSW is willing to consider any options that would be feasible, “both financially and time-wise.”
John Fryar: 303-684-5211, jfryar@times-call.com or twitter.com/jfryartc