From NBCNews.com (Tony Dokoupil):

…while the bigger cities of central Colorado — from Boulder to Loveland to Fort Collins — are bustling again, at least two once-gleaming villages in the foothills are virtual ghost towns, isolated by gaps in the asphalt and rivers that undid a century of civilization in a week of heavy rain. In Glen Haven, a 400-person jewel box on the road to Rocky Mountain National Park, an estimated 80 percent of the homes are empty and every business downtown is closed or totally gone — swept seven miles into the town of Drake, a thousand-person tourist draw that’s also now obliterated and empty except for a handful of holdouts who refused to be evacuated…

The water that cascaded out of the Rockies last month ripped through 24 counties, killing nine people and dampening 2,500 square miles in the heart of Colorado. But the communities of Glen Haven and Drake may be the most devastated, deserted areas left — as well as the most at risk of becoming genuine ghost towns before the “spirit of recovery” finds them too.

“There’s been a lot of talk and a lot of meetings but not much action,” said Steve Childs, owner of the Glen Haven General Store, which was knocked sideways in the flood by a Ford Bronco and the remnants of Town Hall.

Though still officially closed by the county, with roads blockaded to discourage mischief and buildings nailed with red signs reading “UNSAFE,” NBC toured Glen Haven and Drake this week with a pass from the sheriff and the good will of locals. The result, coupled with interviews with more than a dozen residents, was a tour of two map-dots that feel forgotten by the relief effort — and the locals are fighting to make sure they aren’t forgotten by history…

As winter approaches it’s only going to get worse for both towns. Many homes in the area are considered seasonal or secondary, which federal assistance won’t cover, and while a Federal Emergency Management Agency representative says that requests for public assistance through firehouses and homeowners associations should be approved, they haven’t been yet in Glen Haven — the kind of paperwork delay Gov. Hickenlooper has blamed on furloughs at FEMA’s Washington office during the government shutdown.

But who should clean up the destroyed downtowns and private roads chewed through by water? That’s easy to answer in a tax center like Boulder or Fort Collins, which has its own heavy equipment and a staff of skilled operators. Small towns rely on the county, in this case Larimer, which so far hasn’t found the funds to help with the “community needs” list on the fire house wall in Glen Haven. It includes dump trucks, dumpsters, chainsaws, a wood chipper, barricades and traffic cones…

In Drake, according to Sgt. Gerald Baker, a first responder in the county sheriff’s office, “a whole mountain came down” in a mudslide so loud that people covered their ears. They “believed the earth was coming to an end,” he said, and after debris temporarily dammed up the river, it almost did for some people. The blockage released a “tsunami” of water into the canyon. Or as a member of the road crew rebuilding Highway 34 put it: “Goodbye, Drake.”

From the Northern Colorado Business Journal (Steve Lynn):

Cities and water districts are on the hook for at least $13.5 million to repair water and sewage systems ripped apart by floods that struck Northern Colorado in September. The city of Evans was among the hardest hit: The cost of a new wastewater treatment plant to replace the badly damaged plant will cost as much as $7 million, Evans spokeswoman Kristan Williams said…

Cities in Northern Colorado are grappling with how to deal with the flood-battered wastewater treatment infrastructure. While water infrastructure in some cities such as Fort Collins escaped unscathed, Loveland, Greeley, the Left Hand Water Conservancy District and others saw heavy damage…

The Left Hand Water Conservancy District estimates $2.5 million in repairs to its damaged water infrastructure, General manager Chris Smith said. Flooding redirected Left Hand Creek so that the district’s main water intake no longer collects water. The water district also saw damage to multiple treated water lines on Boulder Creek and the St. Vrain River…

In Loveland, city officials estimate repairs will cost between $3 million and $4 million. Damage to wastewater lines will hundreds of thousands of dollars more to repair. The city’s water treatment plant on the Big Thompson River was not damaged, but flooding along the Big Thompson destroyed sections of two other important water lines, including a 20-inch water line and another 36-inch water line. The city disconnected service in those lines and patched in service to the 48-inch water line that city and construction contracting crews were able to save. The city has stopped getting water from the Big Thompson, instead drawing its supply from Green Ridge Glade Reservoir because of river water quality concerns…

The city of Greeley suffered damage to a portion of one of five treated water lines, cutting service to more than 50 customers, said Jon Monson, director of Greeley Water and Sewer. The city has rerouted clean water from other sources to those customers.

From The Denver Post (Mark Jaffe):

As floodwater started to rise Sept. 11, some oil and gas operators began shutting wells and securing facilities. It would be five days before state regulators announced their own plans.
“Did the state have a disaster plan for the oil and gas fields?” asked Bruce Baziel, energy program director of the environmental group Earthworks. “It was hard to tell.”

From the start, state oil and gas regulators were gathering information and passing it on to the incident commander overseeing disaster response, said Alan Gilbert, a Colorado Department of Natural Resources official.

“That’s our role as a technical agency,” Gilbert said.

Throughout the first flood weekend, oil companies provided information on their own operations to the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

“Demands on us to be transparent were high,” said Tisha Schuller, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry group.

Yet as pictures of bubbling pipes, spouting wells and floating tanks began to appear on social media, fears rose about what was happening in the flooded oil fields. On Sept. 16, as the flood covered parts of the oil-rich Denver-Julesburg Basin, more steps to assess impacts were announced by the oil and gas commission staff.

“We intend to compile an ongoing spreadsheet with the status of operations,” said Matt Lepore, executive director of the commission.

Regulations require operators to report spills. Lepore asked for the industry’s voluntary cooperation in assessing the status of all wells.

“In the middle of a disaster, it strikes me that this ought to have been required,” said Peter May-smith, executive director of Conservation Colorado. “If it wasn’t required by regulation, the governor should have issued an executive order.”

The steps announced were “ad hoc,” but the commission was monitoring the situation, DNR’s Gilbert said.

“We are going to have a formal review,” Gilbert said. “We’ll look at what worked and what didn’t work.”

Within days, the commission had about 18 inspectors in the field checking sites. It used its mapping capabilities to identify wells and facilities in floodplains and focus on those. About 1,500 wells were identified in the floodplains of the South Platte and other Front Range rivers, Gilbert said.

“For years, conservation groups have pressed for limited drilling in floodplains, and the state and the industry have fought it,” said Gary Wockner, Colorado program director for Clean Water Action. “Part of this wasn’t a natural disaster but a man-made disaster.”

The industry estimated that at the height of the flooding, 1,900 wells were shut in. There are more than 20,000 wells in the basin. State inspectors counted 14 “notable releases” primarily from overturned or damaged tanks, totaling 1,042 barrels (43,764 gallons) of petroleum products. There were 13 releases of produced water—which contains well impurities—totaling 430 barrels (18,060 gallons), according to the state.

“That’s thousands of gallons of pollutants poisoning our waterways,” Wockner said. “It isn’t something to be dismissed.”

By Thursday, inspectors had covered 90 percent of the wells and facilities in the floodplains, Gilbert said.

“When you have an industrial activity of this scale, you need clear contingency plans,” said Conservation Colorado’s May-smith. “A clear plan in advance.”

State officials will review how effective regulations were in preventing flood spills and whether reporting and emergency plans were adequate, Gilbert said.

Could that lead to new rules or plans?

“That is what we are going to look at,” Gilbert said.

State and industry officials insist their performance was good.

“It was chaos—11,000 homes, 200 miles of road, destroyed,” the Oil and Gas Association’s Schuller said. “You can’t plan for that. You just have to be flexible and responsive.”

From The Denver Post (Joey Bunch):

Nearly a month in steps are being taken on the long road to Colorado’s recovery from September’s floods that tore through roads, towns, homes and lives. In response, the Colorado legislature announced a 12-member bipartisan Flood Disaster Study Committee Wednesday.

Senate Democrats appointed Sen. Jeanne Nicholson of Gilpin County, Sen. John Kefalas of Fort Collins and Sen. Matt Jones of Louisville. The Republicans named Sen. Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs, Sen. Scott Renfroe and Sen. Kevin Lundberg of Berthoud.

Republicans in the House are represented by minority leader Brian DelGrosso of Loveland, Rep. Stephen Humphrey of Severance and Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg (of Sterling. The Democrats appointed Rep. Mike Foote of Lafayette, Rep.Jonathan Singer of Longmont and Rep. Dave Young of Greeley.

House Speaker Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, stated, “We’re doing this in a strictly bipartisan way because politics has no place in disaster relief. Unlike Washington, we’re coming together to address a difficult issue facing our state.”

The group will meet five times before and during the next legislative session to review short-term relief and long-term planning for flood recovery.

State and FEMA analysts are still collecting information about the losses. Eventually they will tell us how costly the storm was. The preliminary numbers have been grim, and the toll is expected to rise as FEMA continues to collect damage assessments and calculates more specific estimates on how much repairs will cost.

“It’s abundantly clear that we need to get to work on policy that helps victims and proactively mitigates future disaster,” Nicholson said in a press release from the Senate Democrats. “We have a nonpartisan, urgent charge, and I welcome the help of anyone in fulfilling it.”

Kefalas added in his statement: “In the days following the flood, I spent time with displaced families, and I witnessed how our community pulled together. Collaboration between the public and private sectors was critical for effective, timely and humane responses.”

DelGrosso’s statement called helping flood victims a top priority for the special committee. “I am hopeful the committee will find consensus on ways we can assist flood victims, better equip Colorado to respond to future flood disasters and rebuild the infrastructure impacted by the floods as soon as possible.” he said.

From the Colorado Springs Business Journal (Cameron Moix):

While the north-central section of the state received the brunt of damage caused by the summer flooding — which the governor’s office has estimated at $300 million to $500 million — Colorado Springs and its surrounding communities also sustained severe damage to parks and infrastructure…

The majority of work on or pertaining to state roadways in the Pikes Peak region should be completed by early spring and will produce a bill of approximately $15 million, according to estimates by the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Doug Lollar, the north program engineer for CDOT’s Region 2, said that the majority of El Paso County’s damage is concentrated around the Waldo Canyon burn scar near Manitou Springs, which covered U.S. Highway 24 with feet of floodwater, scattered debris and left much roadway in disrepair…

El Paso County sustained initial damages to its roads estimated at $1.85 million from late-summer floods, according to a Sept. 18 news release…

While the city of Colorado Springs has experienced an estimated $13 million in damage as a result of the floods, Senior Communications Specialist Krithika Prashant said that damage assessments are ongoing to determine specific areas of focus and a concise breakdown of that estimate.

The City of #Boulder is asking citizens to contribute to a crowdsourced #boulderflood assessment map http://t.co/5q4wWIy9sJ. #citizenscience

— INSTAAR (@INSTAAR) October 8, 2013

Here’s the release from Governor Hickenlooper’s office:

Gov. John Hickenlooper today announced a new website that will serve as a comprehensive one-stop location for information about recovery efforts related to the historic flooding in Colorado last month.

The website, ColoradoUnited.com, includes the latest recovery news, current information about impacted areas and how to get help. There is also a place where the public can contact the Recovery Office through a simple form that will be reviewed and responded to within 24 hours.

“All of Colorado is united in helping communities impacted by flooding recovery,” Hickenlooper said. “This website puts important information all in one place and will serve as a resource for people and businesses that are rebuilding. The site will also include the latest updates about recovery efforts and give people a way ask questions and get help quickly.”

The name ColoradoUnited was chosen to illustrate how communities in and out of the flooded areas are coming together to help recovery efforts and are united in making Colorado better and stronger after the disaster.

Visitors to the new website will find an interactive Google map that includes information about road closures, shelters, weather conditions and current traffic flow. The site also includes embedded links to traffic cams and dozens of pictures taken by the Civil Air Patrol.

A “Get Help” part of the website includes information about temporary housing, financial and insurance assistance, medicine and counseling, legal assistance, rebuilding houses, businesses and farmers, and disaster unemployment assistance.

Another section about “Home Safety” includes tips for returning home safely to engage in cleanup and rebuilding. There are other resources for water and food safety, clearing debris and sanitation and winterizing homes.

From CBSDenver.com (Alan Gionet):

“The evidence that is left for us we’re going to try to make the best sense out of it and try to come up with some answers,” said Russell Stroud, lead hydrographer in the area for the Colorado Division of Water Resources.

Stroud was joined by U.S. Geological Survey workers as they tried to compute the amount of water that poured down the Big Thompson Canyon. Those workers are now furloughed and the numbers have been delayed. But people in the area have guessed the water’s flow at 15,000 cubic feet per second.

They will compute the maximum flow — how high the water got.

“Agencies like (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) will use that to delineate their flood maps and insurance will use FEMA’s flood maps to determine insurance rates and zoning and so forth,” said Jeff Kitchen, a USGS hydrologist…

The heaviest rains were in Larimer County, Boulder County and Aurora. In some areas of the Eastern Plains there was little rain, just downstream flooding. Boulder County had the most.

“If you just simply average those numbers, we came up with 8.9 inches in seven days across the county,” said the National Weather Service’s Bob Glancy.

Here’s the release from the University of Colorado (Sara Hart/Thomas Veblen/Jim Scott):

A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates drought high in the northern Colorado mountains is the primary trigger of a massive spruce beetle outbreak that is tied to long-term changes in sea-surface temperatures from the Northern Atlantic Ocean, a trend that is expected to continue for decades.

The new study is important because it shows that drought is a better predictor of spruce beetle outbreaks in northern Colorado than temperature alone, said lead study author Sarah Hart, a CU-Boulder doctoral student in geography. Drought conditions appear to decrease host tree defenses against spruce beetles, which attack the inner layers of bark, feeding and breeding in the phloem, a soft inner bark tissue, which impedes tree growth and eventually kills vast swaths of forest.

Spruce beetles, like their close relatives, mountain pine beetles, are attacking large areas of coniferous forests across the West. While the mountain pine beetle outbreak in the Southern Rocky Mountains is the best known and appears to be the worst in the historical record, the lesser known spruce beetle infestation has the potential to be equally or even more devastating in Colorado, said Hart, lead author on the new study.

“It was interesting that drought was a better predictor for spruce beetle outbreaks than temperature,” said Hart of the geography department. “The study suggests that spruce beetle outbreaks occur when warm and dry conditions cause stress in the host trees.”

A paper on the subject was published online in the journal Ecology. Co-authors include CU-Boulder geography Professor Thomas Veblen; former CU-Boulder graduate student Karen Eisenhart, now at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania; and former CU-Boulder students Daniel Jarvis and Dominik Kulakowski, now at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. The National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society funded the study.

The new study also puts to rest false claims that fire suppression in the West is the trigger for spruce beetle outbreaks, said Veblen.

Spruce beetles range from Alaska to Arizona and live in forests of Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir trees in Colorado. The CU-Boulder study area included sites in the White River, Routt, Arapaho, Roosevelt and Grand Mesa national forests as well as in Rocky Mountain National Park.

The CU-Boulder team assembled a long-term record of spruce beetle outbreaks from the northern Front Range to the Grand Mesa in western Colorado using a combination of historical documents and tree ring data from 1650 to 2011. Broad-scale outbreaks were charted by the team from 1843-1860, 1882-1889, 1931-1957 and 2004 to 2010.

The researchers used a variety of statistical methods to tease out causes for variations in the dataset at 18 sites in Colorado. “The extent to which we could distinguish between the warming signals and the drought signals was surprising,” said Veblen. “These are two things that easily can get mixed together in most tree ring analyses.”

There are several lines of evidence that drought is the main driver of the spruce beetle outbreak. The new study showed when northwest Colorado was in a warm, wet climate period from 1976 to 1998, for example, both spruce beetle reproduction and tree defenses like “pitching” beetles out of tree interiors with resin were likely high. But during that period of warming, outbreak was minimal.

The strongest climate correlation to spruce beetle outbreaks was above average annual values for the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, or AMO, a long-term phenomenon that changes sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. Believed to shift from cool to warm phases roughly every 60 years, positive AMO conditions are linked to warmer and drier conditions over much of North America, including the West.

Veblen said the AMO shifted from its cool to warm phase in the 1990s, meaning the climate phenomenon could be contributing to drought conditions in the West into the middle of this century. A 2006 tree-ring study involving Veblen, his former student, Thomas Kitzberger and researchers from several other institutions concluded that the warm phase of AMO also was correlated to increased wildfires in the West.

In addition to AMO, the researchers looked at two other ocean-atmosphere oscillations — the El Nino Southern Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation — as well as past temperatures, precipitation and aridity to better understand the spruce beetle outbreaks. The team found that another effective predictor of drought conditions was summer “vapor pressure deficit,” a measurement of atmospheric dryness, said Veblen.

In the new study, the researchers were particularly interested in “radial growth” rates of tree rings from sub-canopy trees of various species in the study areas that thrived following outbreaks. One hallmark of spruce beetle outbreaks is that slow radial growth rates in such areas are followed by extremely rapid radial growth rates, an indication smaller trees flourish in the absence of the larger spruce trees because of decreased competition for water and increased opportunities for photosynthesis, said Hart.

The area of high-elevation forests affected by spruce beetles is growing in the West, Hart said. “In 2012, U.S. Forest Service surveys indicated that more area was under attack by spruce beetles than mountain pine beetles in the Southern Rocky Mountains, which includes southern Wyoming, Colorado and northern New Mexico,” she said. “The drought conditions that promote spruce beetle outbreak are expected to continue.”

One big concern about spruce beetle outbreaks is their effects on headwater streams that are important for water resources, said Veblen. “In the short term, trees killed by spruce beetles will lead to less water use by trees and more water discharge into streams. But in the long term, the absence of the trees killed by beetles may lead to less persistence of snow and earlier runoff.”

Veblen said it might seem counterintuitive to some that spruce-fir subalpine forests in Colorado are larger by area than lodgepole/ponderosa pine forests. “It is probably because spruce and subalpine forests are found in more remote areas not as visible to most people,” he said. “But potentially, the current spruce beetle outbreak could affect a larger area than the mountain pine beetle outbreak.”

The study had its beginnings in 1986, when Veblen and his students began compiling spruce and subalpine fir tree rings from various study sites in the Colorado mountains. Tree rings from individual trees — which carry information about weather, climate and even events like volcanic eruptions — can be matched up and read with rings from other trees, much like the pages of a book, from year to year and even from season to season.

From KDVR (Sara Morris):

According to FEMA, in the last 30 days they’ve supplied more than $41 million in individual assistance to Colorado flood victims to help them make repairs to their homes.
Boulder County received the most assistance with over $24 million, followed by Weld and Arapahoe Counties.

From The Denver Post (Emilie Rusch)

More than 100 homeowners along Clear Creek in Wheat Ridge are facing the prospect of having to get flood insurance next year. New maps for the National Flood Insurance Program were officially approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency this summer and go into effect Feb. 5. A total of 267 parcels of land in Wheat Ridge will be added to the floodplain under the maps, while 82 are removed, according to city documents.

Not all parcels are homes — roughly 55 percent of the current map is open space — but an estimated 100 to 200 residences will fall under the flood-insurance program starting next year, said Mark Westberg, engineering design supervisor for the city.

“It’s a big impact on people,” Westberg said. “If you have a mortgage, your mortgage company is required by federal law to get flood insurance.”

Wheat Ridge officials are working on policy changes that could lower the cost of flood insurance across the city, Westberg said.

Wheat Ridge residents are eligible for a 20 percent discount on insurance policies based on the city’s flood-protection rating. That brings the cost of insurance in Wheat Ridge down to about $1,100.

Click here to read the discussion. Here’s the synopsis:

ENSO-neutral is expected into the Northern Hemisphere spring 2014.

ENSO-neutral continued during September 2013, as sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies were near-average across much of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Except for the Niño-1+2 region, all of the latest weekly Niño index values were between 0°C and -0.5°C. The oceanic heat content (average temperature in the upper 300m of the ocean)weakened , as a consequence of an upwelling oceanic Kelvin wave contributing to below-average temperatures in the east-central Pacific Ocean. The strength of the tropical atmospheric circulation anomalies, as reflected by convection and winds, also weakened over the last month. Slightly enhanced convection remained over parts of Indonesia, with weakly suppressed convection evident near the Date Line. Low-level winds were near average, while anomalous westerly winds prevailed at upper-levels. Collectively, these atmospheric and oceanic conditions reflect ENSO-neutral.

Allen Best does the math and science behind the phrase in this report running in The Denver Post:

Do you know how to make a meteorologist squirm? Ask for hard numbers immediately after a flood or a big rainfall, especially something like the September deluge that drenched many parts of Colorado’s Front Range with 10 inches of rain in just a few days. In some places, up to 18 inches of rain fell, most of it within the space of 36 hours.

Almost immediately there came a report that this was a 100-year flood in Boulder. Well, no, said a later report; it was more like a 50-year flood, and possibly less. Maybe it was a 100-year flood somewhere else. Check with us in a few months.

Others — including meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — announced that it was a 1,000-year rainfall. Really? A thousand years is an awful long time. What about the massive flooding of 1938, others wanted to know? Where does that rank in the scheme of things?

If the great deluge of 2013 in Colorado revealed anything, it was that the science of rainfall, flooding and even global warming is still imprecise. We all want clear answers and instant tabulations, the way that a website can report page visits and even the locations of viewers. Most of the time, however, the hard sciences can’t give us the hard numbers and precise explanations that we crave.

“Be very careful about historical frequencies, because what gets published the first day gets remembered forever,” said Nolan Doesken, Colorado state climatologist, at a recent forum organized by the government consortium, Western Water Assessment.

Doesken pointed to the Big Thompson flood of 1976, in which 12 to 14 inches of rain fell in just a few hours, creating a giant surge of about 32,000 cubic feet of water per second. Some 143 people died as a result. At the time, it was described as a 100-year flood. But an expert in evaluating flooding, who later methodically examined the canyon, concluded that nothing comparable had occurred since the Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago.

Historical records have been kept in Colorado for only a little more than 100 years. And yet we know that giant storms have occurred many times over the centuries. Every year, Colorado has remarkable deluges somewhere within its borders.

“Throughout history, we have had monsters pretty often somewhere in the state,” Doesken said. “I think there are 50 100-year floods each year somewhere in Colorado.”

Scientists would like something other than the simple description of “100-year” floods in favor of a more complicated evaluation that emphasizes the actual frequency of major incidents. Too often, a 50-year flood is assumed to mean that such an event happens every 50 years, almost like clockwork, though in fact two so-called 50-year floods can occur two years in a row.

“We’re trying to get away from all those aging atlases,” said Kelly Mahoney, a research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, based at the University of Colorado. “But after a day or two of staying away from (the hard numbers), those numbers (still) flow to the top.”

Sometimes, floods occur in places that have never before been identified as floodplains. Such was the case in 1997, when a deluge swamped Fort Collins, killing several people. The water ran in “entirely new channels — very subtle channels — that had not been identified,” noted Doesken. The basement of Morgan Library at Colorado State University got swamped, for example, though it’s nowhere near a creek. “Flash floods can happen anywhere.”

Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist who specializes in climate dynamics at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, made the same point, in a more general way.

“Caveats can get in the way of sound bites,” he said. “As scientists, caveats is all we do.”

Mapping of flood plains is also imprecise, in part because the construction of buildings and other alterations over time have changed the flow of water. Mahoney said identified flood plains are “constructs, and not determinations of truths for all time.”

Can global warming explain at least part of this deluge? The answer seems to be a definite “maybe.” As Hoerling put it, “I am skeptical that you can include or exclude climate change. Our models just aren’t good enough.”

Globally, the atmosphere contains an estimated 5 percent more moisture than it did 50 years ago. In the Boulder area, just prior to the recent storm, there was a great deal of water vapor — 150 to 200 percent more than normal. But how much did that added water vapor contribute to making it a 1,000-year event, at least in some places?

“It is a factor, but still a very small factor,” said Hoerling. In other words, weird weather has been with us for a very long time.

Here’s the release from the Town of Firestone:

Repairs Continue to Water Supply Lines

Firestone Flood Facebook Photo Gallery

Firestone Flood Photo Gallery NOTE: Until repairs are made by our website provider, the latest photos from Oct. 10 are not included in this gallery.

Repairs continue to be made on two of the three water lines supplying the Carbon Valley area which were damaged in last month’s flooding. The Central Weld County Water District has been working steadily on repairing the lines which were damaged when the St. Vrain River washed out a portion of Colorado Boulevard (CR 13) north of Firestone. In addition to the water lines, nine other utility crossings were also damaged in that area. Until repairs are complete, the town continues to operate on a limited water supply and water restrictions.

On Sept. 27, the CWCWD brought into service a 20-inch temporary bypass piping line to increase water supply to the Carbon Valley area. This temporary piping lies on top of a dam built by the CWCWD to divert water back to the St. Vrain River, as well as down a portion of Colorado Boulevard to connect the lines while repairs continue to the main water supply lines. With the temporary bypass piping line in service, Firestone revised its mandatory water restrictions for residential, commercial and HOA-owned properties.

As of Oct. 10, the CWCWD finished the replacement of the 36-inch main water line across the washed out portion of Colorado Boulevard. In the coming weeks, connections of the repaired line will need to be made to the vicinities of where the temporary piping was installed.

In addition to the repairs being made to the water supply lines, crews are working in synchronized efforts to make road repairs to Colorado Boulevard to expedite the reopening of that roadway.

From email from Northern Water:

CWCB Flood Recovery Grant Program

The Colorado Water Conservation Board has approved a $1.65‐million grant for flood recovery purposes, with Northern Water acting as the fiscal agent to administer the Program under the purview of the CWCB.

Grant awards can fund up to 75 percent of project costs that are not reimbursed from other funding sources, up to $25,000 per project for technical services, or up to $20,000 per project for shovel‐ready projects. Water users may be awarded a maximum of $100,000 for any combination of up to five projects.

Eligible applicants

Eligible applicants include agricultural, domestic, municipal, and/or industrial water users in the South Platte River basin impacted by the September 2013 floods. Neighboring water users are encouraged to work collaboratively to minimize costs and cooperatively address river re‐channelization or relocation.

Eligible projects

The purpose of this grant is to provide “seed money” for restoration and rehabilitation projects by facilitating document preparation required for CWCB or other loan applications that are necessary to fund the full cost of needed repairs, and to fund initial construction to assist efforts to get back online temporarily or permanently. Grants could be used to further determine the best course for restoring the river channel.

Examples of allowable projects for this short‐term assistance may include, but are not limited to, technical assistance for and/or construction of:

‐ Stream re‐channelization
‐ Diversion structures
‐ Headgates
‐ Conveyance structures
‐ Pipelines
‐ Ditch repair or cleanup

Timing: Application review and award cycle

Northern Water will begin accepting applications on October 14, 2013. Applications, whether hard copy or electronic, must be received by Northern Water before 4:30 PM on the deadline date. The application and review process will repeat every two weeks until grant funds are exhausted. The table below shows these dates, with an example of four cycles…

*Because cycles are to continue until funds are exhausted, the actual number of cycles could be less or more based on availability of funds.

Contact information and forms
Find more information about the grant program, including the application form and instructions, by:

‐ Visiting Northern Water’s website, http://www.northernwater.org
‐ E‐mailing FloodRecoveryGrantProgram@northernwater.org
‐ Calling Jerry Gibbens or Amy Johnson at Northern Water, 800‐369‐7246

From The Greeley Tribune (Eric Brown):

Colorado officials have made available $15 million for low-interest loans and another $1.65 million in grants to help water providers start repairing systems that were damaged in last month’s historic flooding.

Those announcements were made at a recent meeting of the South Platte Roundtable — consisting of experts from the South Platte River basin, who meet every other month, sometimes more frequently, to discuss water issues in the region.

The meeting, the group’s first since last month’s floods, drew a larger crowd than normal and featured discussions on funding recovery efforts.

Nearly all agricultural irrigation ditches, reservoir companies and other water providers in the region experienced damage along their systems — ditches, dykes, gravel pits, canals, head gates and other diversion structures along the rivers that were washed out or destroyed and now need to be repaired, or even rebuilt.

Water officials at the meeting acknowledged that the $15 million in emergency loans and $1.6 million in grants would only be “a drop in the bucket” compared to the large amount of dollars needed to complete all of the repairs in the region.

Frank Eckhardt, a board member with the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District in Greeley, said at the meeting his district alone has about $1 million in needed repairs.

While the dollar amount may be small, officials stressed they wanted to free up some dollars quickly, so water providers could get started on the repairs, which need to be done before next spring, when water providers will need to capture mountain snowmelt in their reservoirs, and then deliver water to farmers starting to grow crops.

Officials with the Colorado Water Conservancy Board — an organization created about 75 years ago to provide policy direction on water issues in the state — is providing the $15 million in emergency loans and $1.5 million of the $1.65 million in grants.

The South Platte Roundtable unanimously agreed at its meeting this week to contribute $150,000 to the grant pot, bringing the total in grant dollars available to $1.65 million.

The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District in Berthoud will serve as the “financial agent” for the grants.

Eric Wilkinson, general manger at Northern Water, explained at the meeting that the grants distributed wouldn’t exceed $25,000, although each water provider could receive up to five grants.

He further noted that, with $25,000 being the maximum, the grants would ideally go toward technical assistance, such as consulting with engineers and other experts, rather than going toward the actual construction work.

The CWCB is handling requests for the $15 million available for emergency loans.

The CWCB will offer 30-year loans, which for three years will carry zero percent interest with no payments required. The following 27 years of the loan payments will include interest based on current rates.

The CWCB’s loans typically require a 10 percent down payment but that’s not required for the $15 million the CWCB recently freed up.

Applications for emergency loans are due by Wednesday, and based on the expected volume of requests, Kirk Russell, the finance and administration chief with the CWCB, said the organization will look to free up more dollars to loan out.

Discussions of doing so will take place during an Oct. 21 meeting of the CWCB, he noted.

Loan applications will also be considered for approval during the Oct. 21 meeting.

The next application deadline for emergency loan funding will be Nov. 1, with those applications being considered at a CWCB meeting in November.