On Monday, officials were dealing with a road improvement project on Routt County Road 56 that appears to have taken a wrong turn and opened a flood of complaints from residents concerned about environmentally protected areas.

Routt County Manager Jay Harrington and Commissioner Tim Corrigan admitted that the road crews made mistakes last week while working on the road. However, they both insisted that the work has nothing to do with the upcoming SBT GRVL race, which will traverse the county road.

Race organizers were issued a permit in June that allows the event, which attracts roughly 3,000 participants and uses more than 100 miles of county roads, to take place Aug. 15-19.

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“It’s frustrating to me because I’ve been shown some Facebook posts about how the commissioners are doing this at the behest of SBT GRVL, and there is zero — and I want to repeat zero — connection between the work that was being done on 56 and SBT GRVL,” Corrigan said. “This is a road that has needed this work for some time, and the road and bridge foreman and the guys out there didn’t even know that SBT GRVL would be using this section of road, so I want to categorically reject that the county is doing anything specific because of SBT GRVL.”

Lyssa and James Lewis, who live at the corner of Routt County Road 56 and County Road 56B, contacted the Steamboat Pilot & Today late last week wondering how something like this could have happened.

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“The roadwork on 56 past 56C by the Routt County Road and Bridge department is devastating,” Lyssa posted on Facebook. “The impact on conservation easements, wildlife, watersheds and the road itself is appalling.”

Her husband agreed as James questioned the planning and why the weeklong project wasn’t better supervised.

“It wasn’t just done in a day — it was a week,” James said. “They had two graders and a bulldozer up there so, you know, the people that are going to feel the brunt of all this is going to be the operators, and that shouldn’t be the case.”

On Monday, Harrington said a supervisor was working on the road and it is Harrington’s understanding that the foreman for the district’s shop had been wanting to open up the right of way so that graders would have better access for road maintenance.

“What was happening was the vegetation had closed in enough (it was causing problems),” Harrington said. “This is a minimal maintenance road, which gets essentially graded once a year. When our equipment would go through there, according to our foreman in the last couple years, the mirrors and sweep would get knocked off our equipment because it has closed in so much. He was trying to open it up so that he could do the once-a-year maintenance without damaging our equipment.”

Harrington said portions of the road may not get graded every year, but he needed to check with his supervisor who was out of cell phone range at the time.

“My understanding that that 56 as a minimum maintenance road would get once a year some blading,” Harrington said. “Now, whether that’s the whole thing or just sections where there was a problem, I don’t know. I do know that we’ve had requests from some of the adjacent landowners to do work on that road too.”

The county issued a news release Monday evening stating that, upon review of the work, county officials determined that spoil piles and water bars appeared to have exceeded the limits of the county’s right away and the quality of the work was not up to standards.

The release said crews have returned to the area to improve conditions and install erosion control measures, and if property outside of the right of way was affected, the county will offer necessary remediation.

Either way, the planned improvements have caused a backlash from residents and ranchers in the area who are concerned about the potential impacts. Harrington said the county works closely with the easement holders in the area and he has not had any contact with them about the road work.

“I mean there’s a chance that — a good chance — that we got outside of where we should have been working,” Harrington said. “But I haven’t heard anything from the Nature Conservancy or the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which both have conservation easements up there.”

While Corrigan insisted the road work has nothing to do with SBT GRVL, he also admitted that the county made some mistakes.

“The work that was done up there was frankly not done the way it should have been,” Corrigan said. “We are working on remediating and completing that work in a way that meets our own standards.”

Amy Charity, co-founder of SBT GRVL, said she had no idea about the project until she got an invitation from Brent Romick to take a ride along Country Road 56 to see the work.

“We have nothing to do with any road improvement anywhere in the county,” Charity said. “We never have, nor would we ask the county to do anything for our gravel event. We were just as surprised as Brent was and, as I know, a lot of the rural community has been about the work.”

She added the improvements will also make the race more technical and more difficult for the riders who choose that course.

“We are trying to be as forthright with our communication to let everybody know that this is not Champagne gravel, and this is much more technical than they’ve seen in the past on SBT GRVL race courses,” Charity said. “They are still able to switch their course, and we recommend beefier tires for anyone who does choose to do the black course. Our guess is our numbers will go down significantly for that course.”