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The Fremont County Commissioners Tuesday voted to set a special hearing date in April to reconsider a controversial zone change that was approved last December for 143 acres on the Ron Walker Ranch on the northeast corner of Highway 50 and 'R' Street at Penrose. The decision was in response to an appeal from the East Fremont Alliance, a group of residents in the Top Rail Ranch Estates.

(The following statement was prepared by the Board of Commissioners in response to a written appeal from the East Fremont Alliance requesting that the board reverse the zone change approved in December for the Ron Walker Ranch at Highway 50 & 'R' Street in Penrose):

March 20, 2009

Beginning in late March 2009 the Census Bureau will be sending out address canvassers as a part of early operations. This workforce will walk or drive through neighborhoods in Fremont County and throughout Colorado to check that all addresses are in their database when the Census questionnaire is delivered in March 2010. This early operation is vital to ensuring a complete and accurate count.

At the request of Fremont County Sheriff Jim Beicker, the Fremont County Board of Commissioners this week approved a resolution adopting a fire ban for unincorporated rural areas of Fremont County. With the fire ban, Stage One fire restrictions were put into effect immediately. Sheriff Beicker said that while he recognizes that springtime is a busy time when people want to do a lot of agricultural burning, many parts of the county are extremely dry and at high risk for wild land fire.

The Fremont County Commissioners approved a conditional use permit for a gypsum mine operation at Tuesday's regular meeting. The approval for the Salt Canyon Gypsum Project to be operated by GCC Rio Grande came after another lengthy public hearing before the commissioners. GCC Rio Grande plans to truck 11 loads of gypsum daily from the site 2 1/4 miles south of the Fremont-El Paso County line to their new cement plant at Pueblo.

The Fremont Pride '09 Spring Cleanup campaign is kicking off with distribution of free trash vouchers again this year to local residents. Fremont County, the Cities of Canon City and Florence, Twin Enviro Services, RD Recycling, Skyline Steel and Junk Masters are sponsoring the annual cleanup campaign through April 18, 2009. A limited number of free waste disposal vouchers are available from City and County Government Offices.

The Fremont County Commissioners handled a variety of routine business at their February 24th regular meeting following completion of the two hour review of the Southern Delivery System permit issue.

Fremont Sanitation District officials last week urged residents who live within the boundaries of the newly created North Canon Sewer Improvement District to sign contract documents soon if they have not already done so. Sanitation District Manager George Medaris said the funding is now secured for the $3.3 million project in the form of a $1.3 million Community Development Block Grant and a $2 million loan from the Colorado Water and Power Development Authority. He discussed details of the project at a meeting Thursday evening at Skyline Elementary School.

The Fremont County Board of Commissioners has voted to approve a special review use permit for Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) to build a $1.1 billion water pipeline through Fremont County. The unanimous approval of the permit for the Southern Delivery System (SDS) came with a number of conditions and contingencies attached.

(The article below was prepared and distributed by the Bureau of Land Management)