The controversy surrounding CU South explained South Boulder Creek flood mitigation still years away
by Angela K. Evans
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round 7 p.m. on the evening of Sept. 12, 2013, Marki LeCompte left her mother’s apartment at the Frasier retirement community, driving the block and a half home through water up to the running boards on her Subaru. By the time she went back to her mom’s the next morning at 8 a.m., “The west half of the Frasier retirement community looked like a war zone,” she says, mud reaching up to LaCompte’s shins. Although her own house was protected from flooding by a sump pump, LeCompte says the flooding was incredibly traumatic for her mother and others at Frasier, many of whom lost most of their personal effects and family heirlooms. At 93, her mother moved in with her, despite the fact that LeCompte’s house was not wheelchair accessible. After the flood, LeCompte says her mom’s health deteriorated fast as she slipped into dementia. She passed away in 2015. Most of the residents in southeast Boulder have similar memories. The flood water came quickly, as it flowed over the top of U.S. 36 and into their streets and houses. People were stranded as egress roads were blocked and emergency crews couldn’t get in to help. “Our neighborhood got hit really hard,” says Frasier Meadows resident Laura Tyler. “In 2013, we saw water rising within minutes from street level all the way to people’s front doors and many people got a lot of flooding. …We’re lucky we didn’t lose anyone.” Since the flood, however, there have been competing visions within South Boulder about how the City should approach flood mitigation of South Boulder Creek in hopes of providing protection to homes in southeast Boulder before the next big flood comes. It’s been a complicated process, involving a wide variety of stakeholders with competing priorities, and one that has caused much 8
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ANGELA K. EVANS
frustration over the years. After several flood studies, the City has determined the best place for a flood mitigation project is on a mixture of open space land, managed by Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP), and property owned by the University of Colorado (known as CU South) just west of U.S. 36. Some residents, those of South Boulder Creek Action Group, including Tyler, have been pushing for collaboration between CU and the City in hopes of getting flood mitigation as quickly as possible. Their mantra: “Just do something,” as Karla Rikansrud, vice president for philanthropy and social responsibility at Frasier retirement community, says. Others, mainly those from Save South Boulder, including LaCompte, say they’re also concerned about flood mitigation, but are wary of the impacts the City’s proposed plan will have on open space land and endangered species that live there, as well as CU’s plans to develop the property that could alter the neighborhood significantly. For years various parties have gone back and forth about potential design concepts that would impact the area differently and have differing levels of flood protection for the 3,500 people who live in the South Boulder MAY 14, 2020
Creek floodplain. Major decisions were set to be made this spring, before the current pandemic pushed back the timeline to early summer. In late February 2020, during a study session on the subject, Boulder City Council directed City staff to proceed with a design concept that will include a floodwall, earthen dam and detention area on a mixture of CU and open space property to protect downstream residents in the event of a 100-year flood. (Staff ’s analysis also explored 200and 500-year options.) The plan requires the City to annex CU’s property, since it will be using some of it for flood mitigation, although what the University plans to build on the property is yet to be determined. At an April 20 meeting, the Water Resources Advisory Board (WRAB) approved the 100-year option in a 3-2 vote, despite pushback from Save South Boulder. The Planning Board discussed CU’s annexation and flood mitigation at its meeting on May 7, although it did not take any formal action on the project. Now, the Open Space Board of Trustees (OSBT) is set to discuss the issue at its June 3 virtual meeting and provide recommendations before the City Council officially votes on a design concept after a public hearing I
in June. What follows is a brief history of the property as well as an explanation of some of the competing priorities and challenges currently facing the project. FROM GRAVEL PIT TO CU PROPERTY The 308-acre property now known as CU South was formerly a mined gravel pit last operated by the Flatiron Companies. Over the course of about a decade, millions of cubic yards of sand and gravel were removed from the site, lowering the area significantly. In order to protect the gravel operation from flooding, a temporary mile-long berm, which still exists today, was constructed. Although there has been some contention about whether or not the land should have been purchased by the City as open space instead, CU bought the property from Flatiron Companies in 1996 for $16.4 million. As part of that purchase, a floodplain study revealed that much of the property was in the South Boulder Creek floodplain, as were hundreds of homes in neighborhoods to the north, such as Keeywadin and Frasier Meadows. But it wasn’t always so, says Rikansrud. “This is [Fraiser’s] 60th anniversary and when we were built it was just meadows,” she says. But as the City built Foothills Parkway and reworked the intersection at Table Mesa, it put the community in the floodplain, and Frasier even got a letter from the City encouraging the organization to get flood insurance. All of it was just an “unintended consequence as a result of the city growing,” Rikansrud says. In 2003, the City began working on the current flood mitigation project, recognizing that a major flooding event could push water up and over U.S. 36 and into the neighborhoods on the other side like it last did in 1969. Then came the 2013 flood, confirming the predictions of earlier flood studies, and making the
BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
