The We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast is a collaboration with the Chaffee County Departments of Public Health and Housing, and is supported by the Colorado Public Health & Environment: Office of Health Disparities.

 

Along with being distributed on popular podcast listening platforms (e.g. Spotify, Apple), Looking Upstream is broadcast weekly at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, on KHEN 106.9 community radio in Salida, Colo., and can be listened to on-demand via khen.org.

 

Greater Arkansas River Nature Association

Website: garna.org

Facebook: facebook.com/GARNAinCO

Instagram: instagram.com/garnacolorado

 

We Are Chaffee

Website: wearechaffee.org

Facebook: facebook.com/WeAreChaffee

Instagram: instagram.com/wearechaffee

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CREDITS

Looking Upstream Host & Photographer: Adam Williams

Looking Upstream Engineer & Producer: Jon Pray

Producer & We Are Chaffee Community Advocacy Coordinator: Lisa Martin

We Are Chaffee Graphic and Web Design: Heather Gorby

Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment: Andrea Carlstrom

Director of Chaffee Housing Authority: Becky Gray

​

TRANSCRIPT

Note: Transcripts are produced using a transcription service. Although it is largely accurate,

minor errors inevitably exist.

 

[Intro music, guitar instrumental]

 

Adam Williams: Welcome to We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream, a conversational podcast of humanness based in Chaffee County, Colorado. I'm Adam Williams.

 

Today's guest is Dominique Naccarato, executive director of the Greater Arkansas River Nature Association, or GARNA, and city council member in Salida, Colorado.

 

Dominique's story is a singular one, one that I describe in our conversation as unique, and I don't use that word often. In a conversation before the one we've recorded, she had said to me that her story is Salida's story, part of it anyway.

 

As we talk and peel back some layers on Dominique's story, I think that what she says is undoubtedly true. She grew up in Salida and like so many teenagers, maybe especially those of us who grew up in small rural towns in the pre-internet era, couldn't wait to leave. So, she did, but in time, she'd end up coming back and it's to the betterment of Salida and Chaffee County and beyond that she did.

 

(01:04): Dominique and I talk about her personal and family history in the area that is deeply interwoven with the waves of change that have come here in the last 50 years. We talk about how she came to leadership in GARNA and what the Nature Association is about.

 

We talk about her vision for GARNA and what will define success for the organization in the longer haul, like 50 or a hundred years down the line because politics in general makes me anxious these days. I asked Dominique why she decided to run for city council and how she balances her role there with her advocacy for public land stewardship. 82% of Chaffee County is designated as public land, which GARNA has a mission to protect.

 

(01:46): At the same time, the housing affordability crisis here is of critical importance. Dominique's professional and civic responsibilities place her at the intersection of those huge areas of concern. Unrelated, but definitely interesting is the fact that Dominique also has been active in roller derby and raft racing and guiding, and she also plays outdoor ice hockey, but we ran out of time to talk about that part. Here we go in an enlightening conversation with Dominique Naccarato.

 

[Transition music, guitar instrumental]

 

Adam Williams: All right, Dominique, welcome to Looking Upstream.

 

Dominique Naccarato (02:27): Thank you. Thanks for having me.

 

Adam Williams (02:29): So, I am certain that we are going to get to talking about some of the professional hats you wear, some of the civic leadership roles you hold, but I really want to start with something that you had said to me in a previous conversation prior to hitting record here today. When you said, "My story is Salida's story in a way," that was really intriguing to me and I was curious to understand what does that mean?

 

Dominique Naccarato (02:52): Sure. Well, my story I would say is part of Salida's story, but I was born and raised here in Salida, in the mid '70s, and born right there in the Touber Building, upstairs of where I now attend city council meetings. So, I grew up here in Salida, lived in a few different places around town.

 

My dad liked to fix and flip houses, so we did move quite a bit, and then I actually left for about six months when I was 16 when my mom moved to Pueblo, Colorado, but then shortly thereafter, missed Salida a lot, came back and graduated from Salida High School in 1994. So, I just have some of the landscapes.

 

The town itself is imprinted on my being and when I left, when I was 18, I was never coming back. Really, really no plans to come back, lots of plans to go elsewhere, and that lasted for about a year before I started coming back to raft guide on the Arkansas River.

 

Adam Williams (04:12): Only for a year? Okay.

 

Dominique Naccarato (04:16): So, yeah, I didn't really think about this before, but I did start coming back in the summer times to raft guide. I tried to stay away for a year. I was raft guiding, once I turned 18, on the Animas River in Durango. That's where I did my training, but all my friends there from Fort Lewis in Durango wanted to come guide on the Arkansas. So, in my second year of raft guiding, I did come back for the summer and started guiding on the Arkansas.

 

Adam Williams (04:44): Okay. Was this during college? Was this a period when it was all about the river? What was going on at that point?

 

Dominique Naccarato (04:53): I was in college. I left when I left Salida. After graduating high school, I went to college at Fort Lewis down in Durango for two years, and in the summer times, I would be a raft guide.

 

Adam Williams (05:05): Okay, so ultimately, at some point here though, you would spend more years away. Is that right? Because I think you taught... Was it high school-

 

Dominique Naccarato (05:05): Mm-hmm.

 

Adam Williams (05:14): ... biology in the Colorado Springs area on the front range. So, a couple hours away or so. So, when that period of being away and that idea, that teen idea that's so common to so many of us, at least in America, to get out of a small town. I grew up in a small town.

 

You definitely want to go out and see more, do more, get away from whatever we thought was so boring. How long did you end up really being gone at that point when you were at least in the springs and teaching high school and whatever might've led to it?

 

Dominique Naccarato (05:47): Yeah, so it's gone for a total of about probably 13 or 14 years there after high school. Even when I went to Durango, I found that town to start to feel really small as well and too similar to Salida. Even a lot of people that I went to high school with were there in Durango and so I moved from there and went to the University of Colorado at Boulder for a few years, and let's see, after that, moved around a whole bunch.

 

I moved to Southern Colorado to Pagosa Springs, and then from there, down into New Mexico, from there up north of Montreal, which is my father land, and from there really missing Colorado, moved back to Colorado and lived in Colorado Springs.

 

Adam Williams (06:44): What was your feeling on Salida at that time? Was that, "Okay, I want to come back to Colorado, but I'm still not quite feeling the whole Salida. Let me set roots from the rest of my life," kind of thing? As an adult there. How were you feeling, I guess, in relationship to that, "I'm 18 and I really want to go elsewhere"?

 

Dominique Naccarato (07:05): Yeah, I think at that time, I still didn't realize that I was going to come back here and set down roots. Definitely wasn't thinking about setting down roots at all and I liked living in the city, and Colorado Springs is a small city, so it's easier to digest in that city way, but Salida had been so isolated when I was a kid.

 

Growing up here, there wasn't as much for kids to do then. We didn't have internet, so there was less connection to the outside world, and just like any rural town, it felt very isolated. So, while I think I started to appreciate the beauty of Salida and the Upper Arkansas Valley a lot more as an adult, I really think I took it for granted as a kid, as we do, but as an adult, I started to appreciate the beauty and the proximity to all the things that I love to do, to ski, to raft, to mountain bike. I didn't know that I was going to put down roots here.

 

Adam Williams (08:10): It's funny that at least now in my awareness of what this area is in Chaffee County, Colorado, Salida as a hub for that, for mountain biking, trail running. We've got ski, all these outdoor things, and especially the river. It draws people from all over.

 

People who, I'm sure, come here on vacation and they think, "Wow, how amazing it would be to live here," and I think that's probably a common experience in a sense that you as a teenager needed to see something else to really realize maybe what you had here.

 

Dominique Naccarato (08:49):

Yeah, absolutely. I think we did some mountain biking when I was a teenager, but we didn't have a whole lot of trails. A lot of times it would just be biking on rough dirt roads or following unofficial trails. So, it was a lot rougher then, but we had some great people from all over the world to lead the way on that.

 

Mike Rust was hired by my mom to teach us kids how to change a flat tire on our first mountain bikes. She was a single mom and my dad didn't mountain bike, so we needed somebody to teach us. She was tired of us having flat tires because it was rough out there. So, that's a pretty cool memory to have Mike Rust teach us how to change a flat.

 

Adam Williams (09:41): I just remember too, when you mentioned your dad, that back in that time, he was flipping houses and what immediately came to mind for me was that's such a popular thing, or it has become one, at least over recent years, and you've got all kinds of TV shows based on it, but I'm thinking that was pretty cool when he was doing it.

 

So, I wonder if you have given thought to that. What was that like as a kid to see him being able to do this work? But that is also, it sounds like, a self-employed entrepreneurial type of thing that has ultimately become popular.

 

Dominique Naccarato (10:18): Yeah. He is very much an entrepreneur and he still helps us with... We're building an ADU right now and he still comes and helps us with stuff, whether it's cutting tiles or installing countertops, but he also owned a plumbing business. So, he apprenticed for a couple of years when we were really young or before we were born under another plumber, and then he went out and started his own plumbing business.

 

So, I think through that, he has gained enough knowledge to see that flipping houses could be... I don't know. I'll have to ask him whether it was just that the state of the house drove him crazy enough that he had to fix it or if it was enough of a money... I think it was enough of a money-making venture to allow us to probably move into bigger houses because there were three of us kids at that time.

 

Adam Williams (11:14): It sounds like a smart visionary kind of thing at the time.

 

Dominique Naccarato (11:18): Absolutely. Yep. Yep.

 

Adam Williams (11:19): Well, that's cool. So, if we go back to the change that you're talking about things, or at least I was thinking of the word change because you're talking about things that were not here when you were a kid. Well, I now know graduated high school in the same year.

 

So, we are of comparable timing, and when we came into internet, how all these things came to be and where connection came from. Again, I grew up in a small town. It was in Missouri and so our access to such things and to that form of connection certainly was... It's very different now.

 

I think that especially since you have come back and you can tell me how many years ago that was, you have witnessed an awful lot of change here just in your time and your experience having grown up, left, come back, and I wonder if you could speak more to what some of those changes are, the noteworthy ones that stand out, things that you maybe see as positive, or if there's some that aren't so much, what your thoughts on that as someone who has spent many years here what those are.

 

Dominique Naccarato (12:25): Well, I remember being just starving from music when we were kids, and we would have to get our music by going to the city for a while there. We would always go to Independent Records in Colorado Springs or Pueblo and that was before.

 

Dave Ward then eventually started a record store downtown, which was awesome, and he could order... We could always watch MTV, but we couldn't go get the music. So, I just remember being a kid and pressing that record button when your song would come on the radio and it was 99.9, The Magic out of Colorado Springs, I think, when I was trying to record some Bon Jovi in fifth grade.

 

(13:14): So, I remember being just starved for that kind of connectivity with the world. I mentioned the mountain bike trails, and I think that's been a huge positive change for our community. Of course, it's an economic driver, but I think just as far as giving kids something to do here. We've got a mountain bike team. Now, we didn't have that when I was a kid. We didn't actually even have a girl's soccer team. So, when I aged out of... I had to age out of soccer in middle school because we were no longer allowed to play with the boys and there was no girls team.

 

Adam Williams (14:00): Okay, and now there is.

 

Dominique Naccarato (14:04): Now there is. Yeah. That started shortly after, I think, I graduated high school. They started a girls soccer team.

 

Adam Williams (14:13): Okay. Isn't that the way it goes?

 

Dominique Naccarato (14:15): Yeah.

 

Adam Williams (14:15): I had some of that as well. That's like, "Oh, well, we have a gap here where you don't get to play." In my case, a primary sport was basketball, and it's like, "Well, we're missing this for these grades," but as soon as we go through, and it probably was our parents who were motivated to say, "Hey, this is missing," and then there's kids who come along.

 

Dominique Naccarato (14:31): I know Title IX existed.

 

Adam Williams (14:33): Yeah, I'm sure it did by then.

 

Dominique Naccarato (14:35): Yeah, it had to. So, I'm not sure why. I guess somebody finally pushed hard enough to get that girls soccer team. I did grow up ski racing at Monarch. So, I did that until middle school and that was a huge impact on my life. Just a lot of people that I still know today who will ski race in the town challenge.

 

We had an excellent ski coach, Bill Gooch, who was... Everybody knows him in the ski racing world. We were really lucky to have him. I had a racer who raced with us, Justin Yarmark who went on to ski race for the US Olympic team.

 

Adam Williams (15:21): Okay. Wow.

 

Dominique Naccarato (15:22): Yeah, so we had quite a program here at that time and I was lucky enough to be a part of it.

 

Adam Williams (15:28): I want to ask you about music because it seems like that really spoke to you. There was something that you were drawn to in that you really were hungry to go find that where you could get it and I wonder if you've thought about what it was or if it still is about music that just really connects and lands for you.

 

Dominique Naccarato (15:55): Well, I think some of it probably comes from my parents. They were big music lovers and they were a part of the hippie movement that came with the hippie wave here in the '70s.

 

So, I definitely learned a lot about music from both of them, and then one of my oldest friend's parents, her name's Kaylynn Steves and her parents, Kathy and Eric, just had this ginormous record collection and they were actually friends with the owner of Independent Records and just taught us so much about music. Everything from blues to garage rock to punk rock, you name it.

 

Adam Williams (16:40): Did you play anything, any instruments or sing or participate in that way?

 

Dominique Naccarato (16:45): I did. I played piano and had a really great piano teacher, and I took singing lessons, but you wouldn't want me to sing in public. I'll sing in private.

 

Adam Williams (17:04): All right. When we talk about change, so your parents moved here with the hippie movement. First of all, that sounds really interesting to me, and I'm not aware of if you're meaning a hippie movement that is particular to this area. Was this, one, an area that drew people?

 

Dominique Naccarato (17:20): Mm-hmm.

 

Adam Williams (17:20): But along with your parents having come during that time, I wonder if you've heard their stories. Just like what you're sharing here, "Well, this is what I've seen in my time.

 

We didn't have a soccer team when I was of a certain age." What might some of those stories have been that you heard that your parent's like, "Well, it used to be this way and this is what we've gained or this is what we've lost," if that's a perspective?

 

Dominique Naccarato (17:44): Well, I think my mom cannot say anything else when she comes here to visit. There's just so many changes. There's so many changes, but they were part of that change then. There was this wave of hippies and artists that they were part of a circle that was really active here in the '70s. Artists that moved here for the quiet way of life or the beauty of the area or just because they could do their art here.

 

So, my parents landed without... My parents had been traveling around. They met on a tobacco farm in Ontario and they were both just being migrant farm workers and from there, they had gone down to Florida to pick oranges, and in Florida, they met family named the Fernazies who were moving here to build a house and a homestead on Poncho Pass to live off the fat of the land there. So, they heard about this place from the Fernazies and soon came to check it out and that's how they landed here.

 

Adam Williams (19:01): I'm curious. I think I'm always curious about history and about where things have come from, and especially when we think about say the cost of life, especially say a house in today's time, and I actually say that. I mean, setting aside what we consider a housing affordability crisis here and in mountain towns and plenty of places these days, I think of that when you hear stories about Aspen and you look at what it's become, but it used to be fairly sleepy and quiet, and I'm sure unbelievably more affordable.

 

Did your parents happen to have any of those stories of... Was this a story of, "Hey, land was cheap and we were able to do this and live with this level of lifestyle that we could be artists and farmers and just love life"? Or what was that kind of angle on their story if you know it?

 

Dominique Naccarato (19:54): Yeah. I mean, they had the foresight to buy a house I think when they started having children. Then they realized they needed to purchase a house and they bought their first house on F Street for like $30,000. So, it's just incredible to me and that was the first house that my dad remodeled or that they remodeled and flipped together.

 

So, I think this is the interesting part. They both sold their last house here and now can't afford to move back. So, when they look at that house on F Street, it's just astounding how much it would be worth today.

 

Adam Williams (20:44): Yeah, I'm sure many multiples on the market, and we'll move on here from your parents' story in a second, but I'm curious. Then, okay, they don't live here.

 

Dominique Naccarato (20:55): Mm-mm.

 

Adam Williams (20:55): Are they out of the area now?

 

Dominique Naccarato (20:57): They both live in Pueblo now.

 

Adam Williams (20:58): Okay.

 

Dominique Naccarato (21:00): Let's see. They had divorced when I was about 12. My dad remarried not long after, and that's an interesting part of the story too. My stepmom's family had some deep, deep roots here in the area. My step-grandfather had worked at Climax mine when it closed and lost his job in the '80s, but let's see.

 

So, my mom moved to Pueblo when I was 16. Sold her last house here in Salida then and moved to Pueblo. She was scared to hold onto it and of course now wishes she had, but at the time, she needed to purchase another house in Pueblo and at that time, nobody saw what was coming. We had just been through a very depressed period in this town. So, it was a little bit risky to hold onto a house here.

 

(21:56): So, she moved to Pueblo. My dad stayed here for about another 10 years before he and my stepmom, and then my two younger sisters from his second marriage, they moved to Ohio. They have since divorced and my dad moved back to Colorado and he moved to Pueblo and now he rents a house from my mom's boyfriend. So, we're back to being one big happy family.

 

Adam Williams (22:25): Okay. We're talking about change. Change is interesting to me because, like I said, I'm always interested in learning about history. I'm curious. In these conversations, a lot of what we talk about is change that we all go through in our lives. I talk about things related to shaping factors and influences in our lives and how we transform as people.

 

To me, that concept change is despite the expression that death and taxes are the only certainties, I feel like depending on if you have lawyers who are willing to help you evade taxes, that's not a certainty. If you have a faith belief system that doesn't believe that we're going to die, you might be reincarnated. Well, okay, now that's not a certainty.

 

(23:08): The one certainty in my mind is change and I think that's extremely difficult for an awful lot of people to get okay with. So, my question to you is how do you feel about all this change, especially given your roles, which we'll talk about soon?

 

As executive director of GARNA, as city council member, and the stories you've already shared including change, are you someone who is comfortable with that? Is it scary and just how do you look at it and face it?

 

Dominique Naccarato (23:41): Well, I talked about my parents coming with the hippie wave of the '70s and so we at one point were part of the change coming to this town. Even though now, when I say that I was born and raised here, people kind of... It's not that common, but they were this wave of change in the '70s and I've learned about that through my husband's family and his aunt Karen and others who talk about that change happening in the '70s and what that looked like.

 

So, I think I'm very open to change. When I moved back here and started becoming involved with some community stuff, I realized what a positive effect things like community gathering places has on our community as far as developing community resilience, and we didn't have very many community gathering places.

 

(24:43): When I was a kid, we would go out to the Poncho truck stop to hang out as teenagers. There was like the coffee klatch over at Stop & Save. There was of course a sprinkling of restaurants here, but there weren't a lot of places, maybe outside churches, things like that for the community to together. It wasn't until after I graduated high school that they started to renovate the Steam Plant Theater.

 

There's the Monarch Spur Trail, which an organization called Salida Parks Open Space & Trails rehabbed into a trail. It used to be the train tracks when I was a kid and that trail is such a huge community gathering place. It provides connectivity to the different ends of the community and there's so many people using it on any day at any given time. So, things like that make our community more resilient.

 

Adam Williams (25:46): I acknowledge that I am part of the current wave or more recent wave of change, me and my family. We're aware of this and in our household and there's a sensitivity to the fact that there are people here who are generations deep in this experience and they might have differing views than we do.

 

We look at the positives. I live in Buena Vista. We look at the positives of things like restaurant culture that's here that surely would not have been and still blows my mind that among other things that are in such small towns, because I grew up in a town similar in size to Salida.

 

We had nothing, and I'm going to guess, I think fairly confidently here, that if I went back to that town, and it's been many years, but the town where I grew up in Missouri, it still has relatively nothing.

 

(26:37): It is not like BV. It is not like Salida. I look at all that change as a positive while trying to be sensitive to how others might feel about it, but we are part of that wave of change and what I see is the future of what's developing here because change again is inevitable, right?

 

Dominique Naccarato (26:58): Mm-hmm.

 

Adam Williams (26:59): Let's talk about your role with GARNA. I'm going to ask you to spell out that acronym for us. Tell us what it's about, what the mission and focus is organizationally, but maybe for you as executive director, how you personally... I don't know if you can really make a distinction between those two things, but how you personally view that role and opportunity in this area. What it's for.

 

Dominique Naccarato (27:22): Well, I would say, yeah, going back to your previous comments, just building on that acceptance of change. GARNA didn't exist until 1996, so just shortly after I was out of here, out of high school. GARNA stands for Greater Arkansas River Nature Association, and it was started in partnership with the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, which is now one of our state parks.

 

So, there was a need for river management. The rafting industry was growing. There was a desire to turn it into the state park and GARNA was started to be the educational partner to that state park or the friends of group to the state park.

 

So, we're about 26, almost 27 years old now and we are also in partnership now with the US Forest Service, Salida Ranger District, and the Bureau of Land Management, pretty early on saw the benefit of GARNA being a friends group to those federal land agencies too.

 

(28:32): So, really focused on the mission, education and experiences on public lands with the idea that people who gain a sense of place about where they live will choose to steward it and take care of it. So, we work to really inspire that in both new people to the valley as well as those who have been here for a long time and visitors too, even those who don't live here, but come to visit, just trying to help people understand the natural resources of the Upper Arkansas Valley.

 

Adam Williams (29:12): You, I think, if I understand correctly, moved back out here to Salida. After that, I think you said 13, 14 years or so away, ultimately, you had been a high school biology teacher in Colorado Springs. Was this the first step back in terms of professionally and what your role was? Was it with GARNA or-

 

Dominique Naccarato (29:29): No.

 

Adam Williams (29:30): Okay. How did you come to then become the leader of what this association is about?

 

Dominique Naccarato (29:39): So, really, I thought that I would get a teaching job right away when I moved back to Salida and it turns out it's really competitive to get a teaching job here. So, I had been teaching high school science, mostly biology, but some geology and earth science at a school in Colorado Springs.

 

I really loved teaching those subjects because of those subjects. I got to teach environmental biology and environmental science too, and yeah, I thought I would move back to Salida and get a teaching job right away, no problem, and it just wasn't happening, but I still managed to find a couple of jobs and have some fun and I went to work at the ski area in the retail shop up at Monarch and I stayed up there for a few years and that was awesome, and in the summertime, I worked for Ron Ferris at Riverboat Works.

 

(30:34): So, I got to still talk story about rafting and make rafting part of my life through by doing that, and then I had a child and was getting ready to go back to work when she was about 18 months old or so and I saw this position open at GARNA, which I didn't even really know what GARNA did. I'll be honest.

 

Philanthropy was not on my mind at that time and so I didn't even really know what GARNA did, but they were hiring for VISTA, which is an AmeriCorps position. It's a Volunteers in Service to America, and it sounded like I got to teach environmental science and not have to grade papers and stuff. So, it sounded perfect.

 

Adam Williams (31:28): Okay. What then was the transition from that role to... I mean, again, eventually, you ended up where you are, which is as executive director and leading the way here.

 

Dominique Naccarato (31:40): So, really, just recognizing that I had landed in an awesome place and with an awesome community that GARNA community and a possible career path. That was different from what I thought it was going to be with teaching and hustling with the executive director then to get enough funding to hire me as the second staff person. So, our VISTA term was three years. I was the last of three VISTAs. That was managing the youth program. So, we got enough funding to hire me onto staff.

 

Adam Williams (32:21): Great. That's been how many years now?

 

Dominique Naccarato (32:25): I started in 2013, so hired onto staff in 2014, and then that same year, because I had been thinking about a master's degree, I didn't know what I should do.

 

I didn't want to get a master's in teaching if I couldn't get a teaching job, and then this master's degree at Western Colorado University popped up, a master's in environmental management, which was just so integrated with my work at GARNA. So, I jumped on the chance to do that and then spent the next two years earning my master's degree while working at gar.

 

Adam Williams (33:02): So, it sounds like when you made that decision then that you had some long-term vision for yourself in the relationship with GARNA.

 

Dominique Naccarato (33:09): Yeah. I mean, I started to. I didn't see that coming, but once I found GARNA and environmental management and just the scope and breadth of what we could do there, I knew what I wanted to do.

 

Adam Williams (33:24): With that idea of vision in mind then, I'm curious. From where you are now, several years in, again leading this way, what do you see as maybe one or two or three of the priorities... if not of the moment, maybe it's longer term. Maybe it's more like 5, 10, 20 years. Whatever you see as a bigger vision for what you would like to see accomplished through GARNA.

 

Dominique Naccarato (33:51): Well, we're always focus on environmental education because there's always going to be a need for that and we are the partner for that filling that gap and because there's a constant influx of new people to the Valley who need to be educated about everything from how ranches and ditches and things like that work and maintain our valley bottom open space and how they're connected to wildlife to what's that mushroom out there in the mountains and what's that wildflower.

 

So, I think that's ongoing. We have some big county sustainability issues that we're working on. The county is writing a sustainability plan. So, we're really excited to be a part of that and help advance things like energy efficiency, and waste diversion is a big one that we've been working on for a while, but there's still a lot of work to do as far as infrastructure for diverting more waste in Chaffee County.

 

(35:07): And then I'd say the third thing is really our equity work and because we want everybody to have access to our public lands because that's voters that are going to help conserve, preserve, and steward our public lands. We're really working on access issues, making sure that everybody that lives here, but also visitors from other places get to access those public lands too.

 

Adam Williams (35:38): Can I ask you to elaborate on that a little bit?