Stars and Bars RestorationIf you live anywhere in Pueblo County, you may have already heard about this: on August 5th the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office announced it has partnered with the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to offer property owners free, voluntary flood risk evaluations. It's a genuinely useful program, and given everything Pueblo County has been through with flash flooding this summer — the Aspen Acres burn scar, the Beulah and San Isabel flooding in late July, and a forecast that keeps bringing more monsoon moisture through the region — it's worth your time even if your property has never taken on a drop of water.
We're Stars and Bars Restoration, based in Colorado City and IICRC certified for water damage restoration, and we get calls every monsoon season from homeowners who had no idea their property sat in a drainage path until the day it flooded. This program is a chance to find that out before it happens instead of after.
What the Program Actually Is
It's worth being precise about this, because the name makes it sound like a home inspection and it isn't one. The evaluations are being offered under the USDA's Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) Program, a federal disaster-recovery program that exists to relieve imminent threats to life and property caused by a damaged watershed — in this case, ground stripped bare by the Aspen Acres Fire that now sheds water far faster than it used to.
According to the Sheriff's Office announcement, information gathered in these evaluations may be used to conduct preliminary assessments, prioritize review of certain sites, and document watershed conditions. The work EWP can ultimately fund is watershed-scale, not homeowner-scale:
- Debris removal from stream channels, road culverts, and bridges
- Streambank stabilization and reshaping of eroded banks
- Drainage improvements and repair of damaged or destroyed drainage facilities
- Erosion control, including re-establishing vegetation on critically eroding ground
- Protection of structures and infrastructure threatened by the above
Two things follow from that, and we'd rather tell you up front than have you disappointed. First, EWP assistance for an actual project has to run through a sponsor — a local unit of government, not an individual homeowner — and the sponsor shares in the construction cost. Second, an evaluation is not going to hand you a punch list about your window wells or your foundation grading. It's about where water and debris are going to move across the landscape, and whether that movement threatens people and property.
That's still genuinely valuable to you as a homeowner, because "where the water is going to move" is the single thing that determines whether your basement floods. A generic FEMA flood-zone lookup won't tell you that — plenty of homes that have flooded in Pueblo County technically sit outside a mapped 100-year floodplain.
Why This Matters Even If You've Never Flooded
We hear a version of the same story every year: "We've lived here for fifteen years and never had water in the basement, and then it happened." Property risk isn't static. New construction upstream changes runoff patterns. A wildfire changes an entire watershed's ability to absorb rain, sometimes for one to three years afterward. Even a neighbor regrading their yard can redirect water differently than it flowed before.
If you're in an area near any of the recent burn scars, that risk has shifted meaningfully in the last two months — not gradually, but suddenly, because the ground cover that used to slow runoff simply isn't there anymore. A free, professional look at how that affects your specific lot is worth an hour of your time.
What to Do With Your Results
Getting the evaluation is only half the value — what you do with the findings is where it actually protects your home. A few practical next steps depending on what comes back:
If they flag a drainage issue toward your foundation: Regrading, French drains, or simple downspout extensions can redirect water before it ever reaches your walls. This is usually a landscaping or excavation fix, not a restoration one, but it's the cheapest problem to solve before it becomes an expensive one.
If they flag your property as sitting in a flow path from a burn scar or upstream drainage: Look seriously at flood insurance if you don't already carry it. Standard homeowners policies exclude flood damage from surface water and runoff — coverage for that only comes from a separate flood policy through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private flood endorsement. We go into more detail on that coverage gap in our water damage insurance claims guide.
If they flag a structural vulnerability — a low window well, a crawl space entry point, an older foundation with visible cracking — get it addressed before the next storm rolls through, not after. We've written about exactly this kind of prep work in our monsoon flash flood prep checklist, which walks through the same-day fixes that make the biggest difference.
If nothing major gets flagged near you: Good — but keep your own records anyway. Photos of your grading, downspouts, and crawl space now, before any storm, are the cheapest insurance documentation you will ever create. When we help customers with claims, the single most useful thing they can produce is a set of "before" photos showing the property was maintained.
We're Not the Evaluation Team, But We're the Call After
To be clear, Stars and Bars doesn't run this program and we have nothing to do with who gets evaluated — that's the Sheriff's Office and USDA-NRCS. They have been taking reports of conditions that need review through an online form posted with their announcement, so check the Pueblo County Sheriff's Office website or their social media for the current link rather than trusting a link from us that may have expired. What we do is what comes next: if your evaluation turns up a real risk, or if you skip the evaluation entirely and water finds its way in anyway, we're the crew that shows up with extraction equipment, dehumidifiers, and a plan to keep a flood from turning into a mold problem.
We've spent this whole monsoon season working properties across Pueblo, Pueblo West, Beulah, Rye, and the rest of Pueblo County, and one pattern holds true every single time: the homes that come out of a flood the fastest and cheapest are the ones where somebody already knew where the water was going to go. This program is a free way to get that knowledge before you need it.
If Water Already Got In, Don't Wait on Us to Explain What's Next
If you're reading this after the fact — water already came in, and now you're standing in a wet basement wondering what to do — skip straight to the phone call. Every hour standing water sits is an hour closer to a mold problem, especially in a Colorado climate where people assume dry air protects them from mold. It doesn't, not once water gets trapped inside walls or under flooring.
Call Stars and Bars Restoration at (719) 676-2456 any time, day or night. We're a small, veteran-owned crew based in Colorado City, IICRC certified, and we run 24/7 emergency response across Pueblo County and the rest of Southern Colorado. Whether you want a second opinion on a flood risk evaluation or you need a truck moving toward your address right now, that same number gets you a real person who'll talk through it honestly. Call (719) 676-2456 today.