The City of Greeley approved a plan to fix downtown flooding in 2017. Five years (and two major floods) later, it plans to break ground on the project. Why is it taking so long?
By Kelly Ragan
When Greeley gets a heavy downpour, downtown Greeley gets flooded. The city saw that July 1 when it got between 3-4 inches of rain in 20 minutes. Several local businesses and city buildings flooded. Some folks got stranded as their cars got stuck in standing water.
It brought the Denver TV stations out faster than a cattle stampede (Exhibit A, B, C). And it caused significant damage to some homes.
Ashley Rodriguez, a teacher in Greeley, spoke at a city council meeting July 6 about the flood damage to her home. She bought the house, near 10th Street and 12th Avenue, as a first-time homeowner in 2016. That spring, her house flooded.
“The damage was so extreme I had to completely gut my basement,” Rodriguez said. “It took me four years to save enough to repair the damages, in addition to maintaining my ever-demanding job as a school teacher in the year of COVID-19.”
She said she’d just finished putting the baseboards up in her new basement when her home flooded again July 1. To see that happen to her home twice felt like a “walking nightmare.”
Greeley Stormwater Project Manager Andrew Fisher spoke to city council Tuesday about the city’s plan to address the chronic flooding. The plan, approved by city council in 2017, was already in motion before the July 1 storm.
The greatest amount of rain fell between 47th Avenue and Weld County Parkway, primarily downtown, said Fisher.
“If you could design a rainstorm to cause the most amount of havoc downtown, this is it,” Fisher said, referring to the combination of the sheer amount of rain in such a short amount of time, the design of the downtown area, and the location of the No. 3 Ditch.
In May 2017, Greeley was hit by another fast-moving storm that dumped around 1.5 inches of rain in a 20-minute period. But it wasn’t just rain. Pea- to marble-sized hail also fell from the sky, clogging up drains throughout the city, making the flooding even worse. At one point, flooding reached 2-3 feet near U.S. 34 and U.S. 85, according to a report by The Greeley Tribune.
There have, of course, been other major floods. The biggest was in 2013, what some experts called a 1,000-year event. It washed out hundreds of residents in Greeley and Evans and knocked out Evans’ Wastewater Treatment Plant -- but July’s storm and the May 2017 storm have something in common:
The city’s Capital Improvement Project plan to fix up 12th Street would mitigate the flooding caused by those two storms.
The total, city-wide Capital Improvement Project, approved in 2017, is expected to cost $203 million
The 12th Street Project
Improvements to the 12th Street system make up a huge chunk of the city-wide Capital Improvement Project. Those improvements are expected to cost $81 million, with the 12th Street pipeline that carries stormwater under the roadmaking up $55 million of that.
Why is this project such a big deal?
It goes across the No. 3 Ditch, so the city has the ability to connect storm sewers with five different ways to collect that water before it makes it to the ditch. It also makes use of five spillways that divert water down various avenues rather than dumping it downtown, Fisher said.
“This is the project that produces the best bang for its buck, despite the expense,” Fisher said.
Why is it taking so long?
Funding is a big part of it. Remember, the 12th Street Project alone is expected to cost $81 million.
Fisher said that Greeley had a master plan indicating the city could do this project as far back as the 1990s. However, the city didn’t have a stormwater utility or a dedicated funding source for stormwater capital improvement projects at that point. Though it had been suggested earlier, the idea didn’t take off until 2000.
“We started that stormwater utility about two decades ago,” Fisher said.
So, that’s when the city started bringing in money to make stormwater projects possible.
The city developed a stormwater master plan in 2007, Fisher said, but then came the Great Recession and many projects had to be put on pause.
Fisher said the city developed another masterplan in 2015, and city council then approved the 12th Street Project in 2017.
The Stormwater Division is in the planning phase now. It expects to break ground at the end of 2022 and is expected to wrap up in 2032.
That sounds like practically an eternity, but that’s because there’s a lot of infrastructure involved, including roadways, water lines, storm sewers, sanitary sewers and more, Fisher said. Remember, the project is essentially an underground pipeline, so construction crews will have to rip out and dig around all that infrastructure. Fisher said it’s complicated by the fact that much of the infrastructure in the downtown area is more than 100 years old, and it’s likely the team will discover other old things that need to be replaced. Designers have to account for that, too. All that takes a significant amount of time.
In addition, the city has to coordinate with other organizations such as FEMA, which adds to the timeline.
Why is downtown Greeley so subject to flooding?
Fisher listed off a number of reasons. The downtown area was developed first. It’s highly impervious, meaning water can’t soak into the ground. There are no natural streams nearby to absorb excess water, and the drains are undersized. Plus it’s a flat area, so it doesn’t drain well. It’s like putting water in a swimming pool.
The No. 3 Ditch also causes problems. Storm water from the southern basin and west from the irrigation ditch flows into the No. 3 Ditch. When the ditch fills up, the excess storm water funnels into the downtown area.
All those issues combined create “the perfect storm of a location to cause issues,” Fisher said.
How to report damage
To report damage in your area, go to report-co-weld.orioncentral.com.
As of Tuesday, Fisher said the city has received 50 reports of damage, ranging from downtown all the way out west.