On Sunday, June 28, 2026, the CMCC Volunteer Water Management Team will be conducting water meter readings throughout the community.

To ensure accurate and timely readings, please:

• Clear the area around your meter of obstructions (over grown vegetation, etc.).
• 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!.

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.

CMCC Board Vacancies:

There are currently two vacancies on the CMCC Board of Directors. The Board meets once a month. If you are interested in volunteering for one of the positions, or finding out more about serving on the Board, please contact Info@Colonymtcc.org. The next Board meeting is on Saturday, August 23 at 10:00 am. Everyone is welcome to attend (contact Info@Colonymtcc.org for the meeting location).

Fiber Internet Update:

Fiber Internet is coming to Colony Mountain! The Port of Skagit County received several grants to bring fiber internet to unserved and underserved rural residences and our area is included in their “Bow Hill” project. The construction contract has been awarded and the contractor has started work. It will be a few weeks before they get to Colony Mountain.

The project is divided into two parts – first the contractor will install the “backbone” fiber cable in the streets (public rights-of-way and private road easements). The installation will be overhead where the fiber cable can share space on the power poles, and underground in the remaining locations. The second phase will install the service connection from the street to the house. The grant funds will cover the individual service costs for most homeowners. More on that below…

The majority of the fiber cable installation will be in County roads, where the Port has legal access for construction and has obtained a permit from the County for the underground installations. There are a number of private side roads, including several in our community, where the Port needs permission to use the existing utility easements for the fiber construction. For CMCC, this means that the Board of Directors will need to grant the Port permission to use the CMCC road and utility easements for Park Place, Schultz Lane, Toad Lane, Linda Lane, Pond Lane, Mountain Drive, and Colony Mountain Lane.

The fiber cable construction methods to be used on the CMCC side roads will be as follows (subject to change):

Colony Mountain Drive – Overhead and underground
Park Place – Overhead
Schultz Lane – Overhead and underground
Toad Lane – Overhead and underground
Linda Lane – Underground
Pond Lane – Underground
Mountain Drive – Overhead and underground
Colony Mountain Lane – Overhead (for services only)

As mentioned above, the grant funding will also cover the costs for the service connection from the main fiber cable to the house for most CMCC residents. If you are eligible, you will receive a letter in the next few weeks from Astound Broadband (the Port’s service provider partner on this project) with information on how to sign up for the connection to your house and available service plans.  Note: you are not required to sign up for internet service to get the connection installed to your house.

The service connection grants will be first come – first served until the grant funds run out. The grant will cover 100% of the service construction costs through December 2025, and then 90% through March 2026. So, watch for the letter from Astound and respond promptly!

If you have questions, email Info@Colonymtcc.org… The Port staff working on this project have asked to be invited to our upcoming annual meeting to answer questions about the project, but if you wait until after the meeting to sign up you may miss out on the end of year service construction grant funding.