For the first time, City of Boulder officials have unveiled the list of flood projects they want to prioritize for construction, using a nuanced formula that takes equity into account.
Out of more than 30 projects in the pipeline, a dozen were considered the most urgent based on their potential to save lives, protect homes and other structures, and prioritize vulnerable communities.
Previously, the decision to build a flood protection project was based on the property value of a structure. For instance, a $10 million at-risk home might take precedence over protecting eight homes costing $1 million each. Now, city officials are prioritizing projects at least partly based on the number of Boulder residents who would have the hardest time recovering from a flood — including those experiencing poverty, with disabilities, limited access to transportation, or belonging to minority groups.
“The idea is, those that have less ability to recover [get protected] first,” said Joanna Bloom, the city’s utilities deputy director. “Those who potentially have more resources to rebound from the effects of a flood, [their] projects happen later.”
Boulder has the highest flood risk of any municipality in Colorado. Constructed before modern floodplain regulations became widespread in the 1970s, many homes and businesses in the city are strewn across flood-prone land near its 16 drainages. The urgency to retrofit the city with flood protection arose after the 2013 floods exposed vulnerabilities. In an effort to catch up, city officials have laid out more than 30 flood mitigation projects, spanning three decades of work, with an estimated cost of $350 million.
“All of the projects are important and they are all slated to happen,” Bloom said. “It is just a matter of which ones go first.”
Angela Urrego, communications senior project manager for the city, pointed out that while vulnerability is now a determining factor in flood projects, the projects benefit everyone.
“The City of Boulder doesn’t have segregation areas,” she said. ”So when we apply these rules for the floodplain, you find mixed demographics.”
Here are the city’s first 12 priority flood projects, presented to the Boulder City Council on Jan. 25:
- The first phase of the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation project involving the controversial land near CU South and building a flood detention wall abutting US 36. (Read BRL’s ongoing coverage of the project.)
- The third stretch of the Twomile Creek flood project that goes from Broadway to 19th Street along Hawthorn and Iris Avenues.
- The stretch of the Fourmile Creek project that requires an overhaul of the infrastructure near the Broadway and Violet intersection in North Boulder.
- The Twomile Creek project that takes floodwaters down 19th Street to Upper Goose Creek.
- The stretch of the Fourmile Creek project between 7th Street and Broadway.
- The section of the Skunk Creek project from Baseline Road to Aurora Avenue.
- The Bear Creek project where it flows through the University of Colorado’s Williams Village and then under Baseline.
- The Skunk Creek project from Broadway to Baseline Road.
- The Bear Creek Project where it flows under US 36 towards Williams Village.
- The Bear Creek Project near St. Andrew’s Church where a new bridge is needed.
- The Bear Creek Project where it flows from Baseline Road to Gilpin Drive.
- The stretch of the Bluebell Canyon Creek project that runs from 15th Street to Broadway.
Some flood projects on the city’s list of more than 30 will finish decades apart, and there’s a chance that future city councils or residents might oppose the water rate increases to pay for them. Given this uncertainty, city officials have stressed the importance of completing the most impactful projects first.
To achieve this, the city worked with community members to establish nine criteria for determining project order. The factors carrying the most weight were life safety (focused on saving the most lives), effectiveness (including property protection), and equity (addressing the needs of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities first).
“Not surprisingly, life safety came out on top,” Bloom said.
About 90 people came up with these criteria through a ranking exercise. The group was made up of 18 members of the Spanish-speaking public, 55 from the English-speaking public, four members of the Water Resources Advisory Board and 12 members of a community working group. The working group consisted of Boulderites living near the city’s drainages who regularly met with city staff for 18 months, while gathering local sentiment from discussions with their neighbors. The group also had two community connectors, who elevate underrepresented voices and build trust between community members and city government.
“We have a high degree of confidence [in the working group],” Bloom said. “I think we had a pretty broad reach in terms of the groups that we spoke with and got input from.”
In the new formula, life safety is given a 29% weight, effectiveness contributes 20%, and equity holds a weight of 18%.
Residents’ vulnerability is determined by the Social Vulnerability Index, created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It reflects factors including poverty, age, disability, race and lack of access to transportation.
Projects are not set in stone
Joe Taddeucci, Boulder’s utilities director, said the initial priority list presented to city council is not set in stone. Taddeucci said it was shared with councilmembers and the public to familiarize them with the new process. He acknowledged the order of projects might change due to logistical constraints.
It’s common practice, for instance, to complete downstream sections of a flood mitigation project first, he said. This helps avoid the problem of conveying upstream floodwaters downstream before the downstream infrastructure is in place. “As a first pass, we just applied [the new formula] to the projects so everyone could see how they would come out as a first step,” he added.
This is why the controversial Reach 6 section of the Upper Goose Creek flood mitigation project is the first section to be tackled — because it’s farthest downstream. But Reach 6 is not on the priority list due to its lower ranking in the formula. Because the project is already underway, it will still be completed before others, according to Taddeucci.
“Our intention is not to just apply this formula so rigidly that it could derail projects we’ve already invested a lot in,” he said.
Another project that didn’t make the cut using the new formula is the first phase of the Gregory Canyon Creek flood mitigation project, slated to begin construction in 2025.
“That is one that’s actually lower on the list when we apply the formula, but we’ve already got a lot invested in it and want to proceed and see it through,” Taddeucci said.
Gregory Canyon’s low score could be due to its route through the Flagstaff neighborhood near Chautauqua. While a cost-benefit analysis might prioritize it because of many expensive homes, residents in Flagstaff may recover faster from a flood compared to those in the Ponderosa mobile home community in North Boulder. The third project on the new list, Fourmile Creek near Broadway and Violet, aims to protect that community, according to Taddeucci.
“There were enough different eyes on it and enough different ways of looking at it that I felt pretty good about it the way it was unfolding,” he said of how the weighting system was set up. “We generally felt like what the community exercise came up with was OK to us.”
The city has faced criticism for insufficient communication around flood projects. Urrego was hired with the goal of not only gathering resident feedback for upcoming projects but also creating trust.
“We understand how important it is for community members [to provide] input,” she said. “We have office hours. We have spaces where anybody can come. We’re offering the best we can so the community can start trusting us and creating relationships.”
first floor of my house was flooded in 2013 because I am low point on Mohawk. Traffic used Mohawk as an escape to Hwy 36. That caused tsuamani type waves to go on all night. I had literally no heat for 2 winters because FEMA nor my Flood insurance would pay to replace the the boiler, although I fought for 2 years. Finally, I have minimal heat because someone reported my house emitting carbon monoxide. Still not enough for an elderly, disabled perso. You have a lot to do other than more construction. One thing is to have better street care for overloaded curb gutters. Another is to have emergency measures in place to stop the traffic from flooding low point housing on popular throughfares.
We are 76 yrs old. We have owned our house for 40 yrs. It is 113 yrs old and in great need of repair, which we do very slowly as finances permit. Our home near 6th and Pleasant was almost completely flooded, our plumbing destroyed and I was nearly knocked out by the flood water in our yard which knocked me down. It was an extremely fast flowing river! We got no warning about this flood from the “warning sirens” All of this cost us $57,000 in loans for repairs. The culvert yards from our house was the one that flooded, it just couldn’t handle the water. When the city came out to “repair” it, they replaced the culvert with an identical one, same size, etc. We had three neighborhood meetings with the city, and voted almost unanimously for a plan. These meetings were a joke and insulting to us, because apparently they were meant to lessen complaints rather than help us. The third one was a meeting called for a time unavailable to my husband and I, but since we had been to two, we thought we’d be given “dispensation.” However when we called to ask why our neighborhood agreement hadn’t been followed, we were reminded that we “weren’t at the meeting!” The plan we had voted for included a footbridge over the creek that flooded, which would have opened up for flood water not to be blocked. However, the nearby the objected, as it meant that their parents would have been inconvenienced in that they would no longer be able to careen through our neighborhood at breakneck speed only to park so close to the corners of our streets that we can barely get out of them. So now we wait for the next flood, which will no doubt flood our home which, despite flood insurance, we could never pay for, as the city has apparently decided that we are not in the flood zone,(!!) despite clear evidence to the contrary. They have bought two houses near us in order to destroy them in order to let water flow. We live in a house that we own, The houses that were condemned had owners, I believe. We have a active life. But leaving Boulder would be financially impossible for us, especially since our property taxes have almost doubled since COVID. Clearly Boulder does not value its senior citizens and are just waiting for us to die so that the younger residents can buy multi-million dollar homes and pay higher taxes (for no improved services) and be strong enough to bicycle to and fro to doctor appointments, and to pick up groceries (however our electric bikes get us yelled at by young bikers who insist we’re going too slow or two fast. There was a time when we were proud of our city government, and respected it, but we no longer trust them, take no pride in them and respect them not at all. As people who worked in social services for most of our lives, we find it disgusting that your seniors are so poorly treated.