From The Colorado Springs Gazette (Billie Stanton Anleu):
Mayor John Suthers is discouraged, frustrated and more than a tad disgruntled by Pueblo County’s failure to accept Colorado Springs’ offers of hundreds of millions of dollars for stormwater projects.
Friday, the county was to receive an offer to beat all previous propositions, one that also trumps the $15 million to $16 million annual expenditures under the city’s Stormwater Enterprise, a tax-funded program that ran from 2005 to 2009.
The new proposal calls for $445 million to be spent over the next 20 years through an enforceable intergovernmental agreement that carries $1 million penalties if the promised amounts aren’t spent.
In the first five years, at least $100 million would be spent, followed by $110 million over the next five years, $115 million over the ensuing five years and $120 million over what could be the final five years.
Why “could be”? Because if 73 targeted projects aren’t done by then, $24 million would continue to be spent each year until those fixes are finished.
The county’s consulting Wright Water Engineers and the city’s consulting MWH Global engineers mutually chose those projects to benefit Pueblo and Colorado Springs.
Since he took office in June, Suthers has stressed the importance of meeting the city’s obligation to Pueblo, vowing to spend $19 million a year, including $3 million from Colorado Springs Utilities, to improve conditions along Fountain Creek and its tributaries.
The mayor, City Council and Utilities have upped the ante considerably, though, since Pueblo County threatened to withhold the 1041 permit that would allow Utilities to launch the Southern Delivery System, or SDS, on April 27…
Pueblo County isn’t the sole source of consternation, however. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found during an August inspection that Colorado Springs falls short on water quality and stormwater infrastructure. The EPA warned the city and the U.S. Department of Justice that it might sue to restrict the city’s MS4 water permit.
City officials have been busy since, hiring engineer Richard Mulledy to head a reorganized Stormwater Division, scurrying to clean weed-crowded culverts, scattered riprap in channels and sediment-laden pipelines.
Mulledy, who previously worked for Pueblo, is optimistic about Colorado Springs’ new program.
“The improvement plan is very good – detailed, actionable, realistic,” he said Thursday. “The city has incredibly talented, motivated professionals. That, with the plan, I think we have a great opportunity.”
But the challenges are immense, Mulledy acknowledged.
“Fountain Creek is one of the most unstable, flashy creeks in all the nation. It’s a unique animal.”
Flows can vary from a base flow of 120 cubic feet per second to 20,000 cubic feet per second during a 25-year event, swelling the creek to 100 feet wide and 10 feet deep, he said.
“On top of that, the material along that creek is an alluvial field; it’s a sand. So it’s kind of the perfect storm.”
Pueblo knows that all too well. Colorado Springs’ growth has resulted in more impermeable pavement. But with the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012 denuding mountainsides, sediment in Fountain Creek increased at least 278-fold, pushing water levels far higher, Wright Water Engineers found in a 2015 study.
Plenty of federal and state grants helped Colorado Springs address that damage, and now the city is embarking on 73 projects designed to control flooding, reduce sedimentation and improve water quality.
Three-step process a beginning
First comes a $3 million detention pond along Sand Creek – “named appropriately,” Mulledy notes – to stop the sediment flow before it hits Fountain Creek.
Next is $2 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency projects from the presidential disaster declaration after the 2013 flooding, work that will rehabilitate wash-out areas, remedy sediment transport issues and improve water quality.
Then comes a $250,000 King Street detention pond off Fountain Creek, a retrofit to ensure full detention and address channel-forming flows.
“Instead of having just a flood-control facility, it manages that flow to more closely mimic natural discharge,” Mulledy explained. “And that’s a great thing, because what transports the most sediment is the everyday flow.
“Of course, sediment is the issue, because that’s what affects their levee levels” in Pueblo.
That’s only the start of the $445 million worth of work Colorado Springs promises to provide over the next two decades.
“Man, we put everything on the table,” Suthers said Thursday. “To the extent they’ve long cited that we did away with the Stormwater Enterprise, and we’ve offered far more than that. We’ve made offers to help with sediment issues and to push forward to fund the Fountain Creek (Watershed, Flood Control and Greenway) District.”
Colorado Springs Utilities is to pay that district $10 million a year for five years to perform more flood-control measures starting in December. But the district could get its first $10 million earlier if the SDS gets to start delivering water April 27.
“The other thing we’ve done, we’ve offered that any provisions in the EPA agreement to benefit them would also be put in the IGA,” Suthers said.
“We still don’t have an agreement despite the fact that we’ve stepped up,” the mayor said. “I’m very frustrated that we’re still so far apart. If we go to court, we’re going to say we’re in for far greater amounts. Litigation would simply not be a constructive way to resolve this.”
Pueblo County commissioners are set to meet at 9 a.m. Monday and Wednesday in the Pueblo County Courthouse, 215 W. 10th St.