Steve Pomerance

I’m part of a group of citizens helping Boulder city staff on the master plan for stormwater and flood protection work for Boulder’s waterways, other than South Boulder Creek. Just last week, we had some interesting discussions about whether we should focus more on how to prioritize the many projects that would cost in total hundreds of millions of dollars, or focus more on increasing the near-term funding for these projects to reduce the need to prioritize by doing more projects concurrently rather than sequentially. To give this some scale, current funding is approximately $7 million annually. City staff predicts that it may take more than 50 years to complete the work, and that upping funding to $11 million per year would allow completion in around 30 to 35 years. The total cost is estimated at roughly $350 million for about 30 projects. Per the 2014 Flood Impact Survey of those drainages impacted by the 2013 flood, damage was over $176 million in 2014 dollars, about $215 mill

I’m not a professional water supply engineer. But I’ve learned enough over my decades of involvement in our city government to be very concerned about our future ability to keep providing adequate water for existing residents and businesses, much less the significant amounts of additional development being approved. Boulder’s water comes from three sources: The city-owned watershed  is on the east side of the Continental Divide, from South Arapahoe Peak to Niwot Ridge. It feeds many small reservoirs, and then comes via pipeline from above the Peak-to-Peak Highway to the Betasso treatment plant on Sugarloaf Road. We also own water  coming down Middle Boulder Creek, stored in Barker Reservoir near Nederland, and delivered via the Boulder Canyon gravity pipeline past the Boulder Canyon hydroelectric plant to Betasso. About a third comes  from our shares of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project (managed by the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District), piped from the Colorado Riv