T’Naus Nieto
The Chronicle-News
‘Not a lot of people were happy, but we may have avoided something really bad happening to the innocent,’ says emergency manager
Joe Richards, Las Animas County’s emergency manager, was chopping wood on the night of Friday, June 6, when he received a call from Apogaea’s board of directors, seeking his advice on how to proceed after multiple drinks tested positive for fentanyl.
The incidents happened during Apogaea’s yearly regional burning man festival in LAC (just outside Valdez), which left the board wondering how to proceed.
“Well, that’s going to be up to you,” Richards reportedly replied to the board after they asked him if they should shut down the festival.
“The county will not shut you down,” Richards said. “You have a legal permit. You have stated that you are policing yourself. We have the fire department, the sheriff’s [office], and the ambulance district on call, in case, as a backup. But basically— it’s your show to run.”
“Well, if it were you, what would you do?” the board reportedly asked.
“Well, I’m a county employee. But, if it were me, I think you guys are on the right track. You might need to shut it down,” Richards replied.
The festival reportedly had around 1,400 to 1,500 attendees when the organizers decided that the risks of nonconsensual fentanyl dosing were too high.
The DEA claimed that just two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal depending on a person’s body size and tolerance.
Locally, the consequences of fentanyl are severe, with the Colorado Rural Health Center reporting that Las Animas County was No. 1 in Jan. 2025 for counties with the highest rates of opioid overdose deaths at 55.2 per 100,000.
On the evening of June 6, Apogaea took to social media and passed out fliers to attendees to announce that their annual LAC festival would be discontinued.
“Apogaea 2025 has been officially shut down,” the flier stated. “Due to multiple instances of nonconsensual drug exchange and dosing involving substances containing fentanyl. We continue to be concerned about the danger to the community.”
On June 8, Apogaea’s board of directors released an announcement providing further details.
In the announcement, they claimed that no one was dosed or physically harmed during the festival. However, they emphasized the seriousness of the situation, which ultimately led to their decision to stop the event.
According to Apogaea, on the afternoon of Thursday, June 5, two festival goers approached a “department tent” and claimed that they had tested a “gifted substance” that was positive for fentanyl. Apogaea, however, did not test that initial substance themselves, nor did they have possession of it.
Although the initial reports were miscommunicated as more severe than it was, Apogaea’s teams were on “high alert.”
The following morning, another attendee spotted an undissolved gelcap in their water bottle, which Apogaea’s team did field test, and discovered fentanyl.
Apogaea stated, “Because the bottle had been on volunteer premises, there was immediate concern that somebody might be targeting our volunteers. Apogaea tested the gelcap again with multiple reagent tests, which resulted in confirming the presence of multiple substances… With the presence of the gelcap reagent tests and the multiple positive fentanyl results, our teams had a high confidence that this was a situation of nonconsensual drugging.”
Apogaea also cautioned that field test methodologies may not be completely accurate with the possibility of false positives.
Additionally, Apogaea dumped its community water as a precaution.
“Ultimately, the safety of our participants is paramount, and we would rather err on the side of safety instead of risk tragedy,” Apogaea stated.
One attendee took to social media to share their thoughts, saying, “Just got home from that one. The President of Apo came camp by camp, thanked everyone, and explained what happened. It was out of her hands. The org did everything they could to keep this from happening.”
Although some may criticize the decision Apogaea made, Richards, however, believed the organizers placed people over profits.
Richards said, “Here’s a group of people who shut it (the festival) down because it was the right thing to do, not because it was the profitable thing to do. Because human life is so much more precious than a dollar bill in your pocket.”
When asked about criticisms regarding the decisions, Richards said, “Can you imagine if a child picked up mom’s water bottle, thinking I can have a drink of water, and it was full of fentanyl? The optic would be terrible. But I did have a couple of vendors call me [angry], asking why I shut it down. I said that I didn’t; the festival shut itself down. But yes, I did concur with them though. Not a lot of people were happy, but we may have avoided something really bad happening to the innocent.”
When asked about the future of the festival in LAC, Richards explained that they plan to conduct an AAR, or After-Action Review, with the board of directors to discuss the things they did well and ways to improve.
“I don’t think this is the end,” Richards said. “Just another chapter of the saga. We’re working hard to make this better… They have a great plan. They’re organized very well. Their incident commander and staff worked admirably, and it worked as it should have. Many other groups I’ve known in the past were there just to make a buck, and these people were [conscientious] and did everything by the book. It was very admirable. And I’m very proud of them. Especially because I know he (the incident commander) took a lot of heat for shutting it down.”
“We want to encourage these festivals. We want to encourage people to have fun and have a good time. But we have an obligation to try to keep them safe. The organizers of the event have an obligation to keep their customers safe. And we worked together to do that. I’m proud of them for doing what they did. I tip my hat off to them.”
