Mancos trustees declare their own flood disaster emergency
Resolution 12, signed November 11 and posted to the town website a day later, declares a local disaster emergency over the Mancos River flood of November 1 and 2. It is the step the county was told the town needed before FEMA money can flow.
The Town of Mancos has declared its own local disaster emergency over the flooding that ran through town at the start of the month.
The Board of Trustees passed Resolution 12, Series 2026, at its regular meeting on Wednesday, November 11. The town posted the signed resolution to its website on Thursday. It is signed by Mayor Cindy Simpson and by Town Clerk and Treasurer Mercedes Granados.
The resolution names the flooding as the “Mancos River Flood Event” and puts a start and an end on it: it began inside town limits at about 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 1, and ended on Monday, November 2. The flood, the resolution says, “exceeded the ability of the Town and other local resources to contain and mitigate,” and the river overflowing its banks throughout town was an immediate threat to the public and to the town itself.
What a declaration does
The resolution sets out the legal machinery in its own words. Under state law, it says, a local disaster emergency may be declared only by the principal executive officer of a political subdivision, and it cannot run or be renewed beyond seven days without the consent of the governing board — which is what the trustees voted to give. The declaration has to be publicized and filed with the county clerk and recorder and with the state’s division of emergency management.
The effect, the resolution says, is “to activate the response and recovery aspects of any and all applicable local and interjurisdictional disaster emergency plans and to authorize the furnishing of aid and assistance under such plans.”
Why the timing mattered
The town’s declaration was expected. Montezuma County commissioners adopted their own disaster declaration, Resolution 13, on the morning of Tuesday, November 10 — the day before the Mancos vote — and at that meeting a Region 9 official told the board that state officials at the Department of Local Affairs had advised that without the county’s declaration the Town of Mancos “would be ineligible for FEMA reimbursement,” even though the town was declaring its own disaster the following night. He described the county’s resolution as “an umbrella step that the county is taking to help protect the town of Mancos.” That meeting is covered in the Current’s story on the county declaration.
Commissioners were also told that individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is unlikely to arrive quickly, and that public entities — the county and the towns of Cortez, Mancos and Dolores — would be helped first.
The flood and what followed
The November 1 flood is the same event that overtopped the town’s wastewater lagoons, closed the South Spruce Street bridge and, within days, pushed the municipal water system past the point where it could keep up with demand. The town has been under a state-required boil-water advisory since November 6, and sent samples to a laboratory on Thursday with results expected Friday.
The resolution itself says nothing about damage figures, cost or what the town will claim. It is the declaration and nothing more.
Source: Town of Mancos, Resolution 12, Series 2026, signed November 11, 2026 and posted to the town’s documents page on November 12, 2026; Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners meeting of November 10, 2026.