2026-09-10 · Colorado · Compliance

Since July 1, 2026, a permit application in unincorporated Jefferson County has to show rock or gravel in the first five feet around a house, noncombustible fencing within eight feet of it, and no junipers, arborvitae or Gambel oak in the intermediate zone. The Jefferson County Wildfire Resiliency Code was approved by the Board of County Commissioners on March 10, 2026, and its own section 101.2.1 sets the date: “This code shall become effective on July 1, 2026, and shall apply to all permits applied for on or after July 1, 2026.”¹

Searched in full, the twenty-eight-page code contains zero occurrences of “association,” “covenant,” “HOA” or “homeowner.” That silence is the story for anyone in a covenanted Jefferson County community, and it is the pattern across nearly every Colorado local instrument in this space.

Where the code comes from

Colorado's Wildfire Resiliency Code Board adopted the statewide Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code on July 1, 2025, based on the 2024 International Wildland-Urban Interface Code. Every jurisdiction with land designated in the wildland-urban interface had to adopt it, or a code meeting or exceeding it, by April 1, 2026, and enforce it from July 1, 2026. Jefferson County met both dates.

The code runs on two hazard classes — Class 1 Interface and Class 2 Intermix — mapped on a new Wildland Urban Interface Overlay District map which, per the county, “expands the WUI boundary into the plains.” Chapters 1, 2 and 4 form part of the county building code; chapters 3 and 5 form part of the zoning resolution.

The first five feet

Structure Ignition Zone 1, the Immediate Zone, is where the code and a landscape covenant are most likely to collide.

Materials: “Use noncombustible, hard surface materials in this zone, such as rock, gravel, sand, concrete, bare earth or stone/concrete pavers.”
Plantings: “Remove all plantings including shrubs, slash, combustible mulch and other woody debris.”
Trees: “There shall be no planting of new trees in the Immediate Zone.” Mature trees of at least ten inches in diameter at four and a half feet may be kept. Crowns within ten feet of a structure must be pruned to five feet clearance from the structure and ten feet from chimneys.
Storage: no firewood or other combustible materials in this area or under decks.

1. Wildfire Resiliency Code Board, Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control — the statewide code and the April 1 / July 1, 2026 deadlines ↩
2. Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code update, Colorado Municipal League ↩
3. Wildfire mitigation code requirements, Boulder County — the three-zone approach and the noncombustible band ↩
4. HB26-1334, "Modify Standards of Wildfire Resiliency Code Board" — the failed bill that would have let affected owners petition the code board ↩
5. Regulations Adopted But Not Yet Effective (Regulation 5-1-28, effective October 1, 2026), Colorado Division of Insurance ↩