Hello Colony Mountain Community neighbors!

Ann and I have some excellent news. Our neighborhood has received a wonderful gift from Skagit County Fire District #14 (also known as Alger Fire). Chief David Skrinde recognized the need for our community to improve the security of our evacuation route and successfully secured a grant from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to facilitate a project removing some of the leaning trees that have the potential to block our escape during a wildfire.

This potential for trees to come down during a wildfire event has been one we have discussed in the past. While we have been lucky to escape major fires up to this point, we all know that when the power goes out up on this hill, it’s nearly always an Alder that has fallen during a wind event.  While having the power cut is inconvenient, having a tree come down and block the road while we are all trying to outrun a fire would be disastrous. If we should have a fire aggressive enough where we need to evacuate, I can guarantee the wind will be blowing that day.   The DNR and the fire district agree and will begin working to secure our egress path this month.

While there are probably hundreds of trees with the potential to fall and block Colony Mountain Drive, we have identified approximately 50 trees located between Schultz Lane and Old School Trail Road that will be removed. This type of work is dangerous and expensive, so while $25,000 is a generous gift, we will need to identify additional funding sources to address the rest of the road in the future.

The work is tentatively scheduled to begin on June 16 and continue through June 18.  There will be traffic control in place, and there may be some delays during the project. The affected property owners, PSE, and Skagit County are all on board with this effort, and I hope the minor traffic delays will not cause too much inconvenience.

Because we are a Firewise Community and have developed a good working relationship with the DNR and Skagit County Fire District #14, we have been given this opportunity.  If you are not familiar with Firewise, please check out Firewise USA @ https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/wildfire/firewise-usa.  Our neighborhood has been an active participant in their program since 2017. 

Chris England

Hello CMCC Community!

We are seeking volunteers to help with heavy maintenance of our community well house on Saturday, July 18th beginning at 9am.

Our community well house needs some loving in the form of a new roof (demo current roof and install new one) and coat of paint. We will also install a new mail slot.

We estimate that we need 6 volunteers for about 6 hours that day. You don’t have to stay the whole time, but we will need more people then.

Also, we would like a volunteer to provide cold water and snacks for the workers.

Should rain be forecasted for that day, an alternate day will be selected.

Please contact our Volunteer Coordinator, Doug Robinson, by sending a text message to 360-708-7933 if you are willing to volunteer to help out on Saturday, July 18th.

Thank you in advance for your help!

On Saturday, January 3, 2026, CMCC volunteers will be conducting water meter readings throughout the community.

To ensure accurate and timely readings, please:

• Keep the area around your meter clear of obstructions.
• Manage any pets that may pose a risk or interfere with access.
• Check inside the meter box and remove any dirt, debris, or brush that could obstruct the meter.

Bills will be prepared and mailed shortly after the readings and are due upon receipt.

Please note: A $50 meter clearing fee will be assessed if access to your meter is obstructed or if the meter box is not properly cleared for reading.

Thank you for your cooperation.

CMCC’s water pump failed this week after a power outage on Sunday. The good news is the water system is working and filling the tanks.

For those that want more information, the system is currently only operating in a manual mode where two people turn on and off the well and booster pumps at the same time. This failure is not like one we have had before. Both the well pump (not what failed most recently, that was the well pump motor) and the booster pump control failed. It looks like the booster pump VFD (pump controller) went out with the Sunday power outages but failed to send a signal back to the well pump to turn it off so it ran for many hours without moving any water and overheated. Fortunately we had a spare because of the last outage. We hope to have everything work normally sometime this weekend.

Thank you to everyone who did their best to conserve water this week.

Also, a huge THANK YOU goes out to Board Volunteers Scott Jackson and Bob Connolly for spending a lot of time this week working through our community’s water pump issues!

The Colony Mountain Community Club’s water pump is not working. We are working to get it fixed. But in the meantime, we are currently limited to the water already available in the tanks (approximately a few days days worth depending on how much we as a community are able to conserve), so it is important that we all work together to conserve water during this time. Please conserve your water use until further notice.
  
We will send out updates as they become available. Contact us right away if you have any concern that you may have a leak: info@colonymtcc.org.