Estes Park board fails to approve $600,000 flood channel design contract

The Estes Park Town Board on Nov. 10 did not approve a contract of a little over $600,000 with GEI Consultants to design flood-channel improvements along the Big Thompson River downtown.

The contract would advance the design from 30% to 90%. Staff said that would allow permits to be put in place and make the project ready for grant applications if the town chose to pursue them. The town attorney told the board that town ordinances require four members to approve a resolution or motion to enter a contract, regardless of absences.

Staff brought the work forward now because FEMA grants that had gone away in recent years became available again earlier this year. Staff said that prompted them to consider preparing engineering plans for grant applications. The BRIC and FMA grants are FEMA programs that look for projects ready to proceed, and staff said grants of this type typically require a 20% match.

The proposed phase would improve the Big Thompson channel from US 36 to Riverside. Staff said the phase would not include the Riverside Bridge, which would be a future phase. The channel work includes excavation and widening, with retaining walls potentially on both sides of the river.

Staff called the project highly disruptive. Staff said the work would include up to one full year of heavy civil work in the river channel, followed by another six months of landscaping and restoration.

The project would require removing the Riverside restroom building, and staff said its relocation could be included in a grant application. The playground beside the restroom would need to be removed for staging, and the parking lot would most likely be used for staging as well.

Trustee Mark Igel objected to spending $620-something thousand on a 90% plan before evaluating other options, and said he did not support the expenditure. "We cannot do anything that's going to prevent the next major flood," Igel said. He questioned whether a project costing $100 million over time was the right approach and urged the town to focus on specific high-risk areas instead of proceeding in phases.

A resident argued that the design addressed a 100-year flood but not a 500-year flood. The resident said historical records did not account for anticipated weather patterns and that such floods might occur every decade or every couple decades.

The resident said the project would "be incredibly disruptive, and not solve the problem, because there will still be floods every generation," and urged consideration of a building-by-building approach to flood resilience downtown over 20 or 30 years. The resident added that the town could do a lot with $500,000 and urged the board not to choose an approach simply because federal funding was available.

Mayor Pro Tem Kirby Hazelton supported the design work, saying it would help the town understand the project's scope, costs and effects on the community. "This is about long-term community vitality," Hazelton said, tying the project to flood insurance, redevelopment, the local economy and life safety.

Trustee Bill Brown also supported proceeding. He said the earlier evaluation had identified the proposed direction and he had heard no reason to think its conclusions had been superseded. Mayor Gary Hall said future generations could benefit from the town moving ahead with flood-related work.

Trustee Chris Eshelman said he wanted more information about insurance and wanted to speak with affected business owners. "I don't have enough information yet to be comfortable moving forward," Eshelman said. Staff said it had not obtained detailed information about how the project might affect insurance availability or rates.

Igel said he was not opposed to flood mitigation. He said he wanted more information about the project's financial, insurance and community effects before committing to a specific path.

The earlier scoping work put improvements across its large study area at over $100 million. A resident said the scoping work put Phase 1 at something like $100 million and described possible later phases higher on Fall River and on the Big Thompson near Piccadilly Square. The resident said the full effort could approach half a billion dollars.

Staff said approving the design contract would not guarantee construction funding. They said the design could sit unused for five to 10 years and would need updates before a later grant application.