GILPIN COUNTY - The Gilpin County government opened their public slash site this year on April 23, and plan on closing it on November 9. Richard Conklin returns as the 2025 Slash Site Attendant and will be directing public traffic in the slash yard.

This year the County will use an air curtain burner for about a month to evaluate and observe the operation in order to determine the effectiveness of using an air curtain burner versus chipping and hauling the chips to a landfill.

Janet MacDougall, Gilpin County Public Works Office Assistant, said that the curtain burner is scheduled to operate at the Gilpin Slash Site starting May 12 and ending June 3, 2025.

The operation of the burner will be handled by the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control (CDFPC) with the assistance of the Timberline Fire Protection District (TFPD).

Air curtain burners are used to incinerate biomass material by burning the material in a super-heated container that is subjected to forced air which acts as a lid on the flames and suppresses the smoke and embers. The resulting ash is highly condensed and can be disposed of locally by mixing it with dirt. This would eliminate the transport costs of getting rid of chips.

The air curtain burning operation will be done on Mondays and Tuesdays, when the Slash Site is closed to the public. Different weather factors will be considered before starting the burn operation. John Sanfillippo from CDFPC said that they expect to burn for about five hours a day and stop adding material around 2 p.m.

Sanfillippo said that the biomass is burned so completely that they will only remove the ash at the end of each week. Sanfillippo estimates that two full days of burning will yield about two cubic yards of ash.

In terms of costs, Sanfillippo said that the diesel engine used to run the air curtain burner uses about 1.5 gallons of diesel an hour, so in a full day of burning it will use about 10-15 gallons of diesel. Staff for the operation include a skid driver, a burn boss, and fire suppression personnel on standby.

The current practice of chipping and hauling will continue to be used after the air curtain burner test, but the County is looking at more efficient ways to dispose of slash. The mountain of chips that built up over the last several years has been reduced significantly.

According to MacDougall, the County is currently fully staffed, so chipping and hauling can be done on a regular basis

The slash yard is open Wednesday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Both the chipper and the air curtain burner require clean slash to work properly so citizens need to separate trash from the slash and dispose of it at the transfer station across the road.

The Gilpin County Slash Site takes pine beetle-infected logs, but these also need to be separated out and deposited at the infected log site on the east side of the yard.

For more information about the Gilpin County Slash Site, contact Gilpin County Public Works Office Assistant Janet MacDougall at 303-582-5004 or jmacdougall@gilpincounty.org. Citizens are asked not to call 911 if they see smoke at the slash site on Mondays or Tuesdays for the next month.