Aurora’s Four-Mile Sewer Project Through Denver Sailed Through City Council Unanimously, With No Staff Report And No Discussion

Story and photos by Mark Silverstein

For the GPHN

Last month’s report described the trail of demolished trees and razed vegetation that Aurora’s contractors carved out earlier this year along a four-mile section of First Creek in Denver. They are building a sewer line for Aurora that takes a shortcut through the natural open spaces in Denver’s Green Valley Ranch subdivision.

There were some unanswered questions I hoped to explore in a follow-up: Was it necessary to cut down hundreds of trees in this neighborhood northeast of Park Hill? Why wasn’t the sewer routed under city streets instead? What is the process for Aurora to get Denver’s OK to plow through Denver’s open space? And was there an opportunity, before the plans were set in concrete, for the public to speak up, for the nature lovers to argue for less destruction of wildlife habitat?

So I poked around a bit, filed some open records requests, reviewed city council documents and perused emails of Aurora and Denver officials. I spoke with the public information officer (PIO) for Aurora Water, Elizabeth Lefebvre, and with Ben Rickenbacker, of Denver’s Forestry Department. Here’s what I learned.

Out of the public eye

Aurora first approached Denver officials about the scheme in 2020, and all the planning for the sewer project took place out of the public eye. There was no opportunity for birders, nature lovers, neighborhood residents or other members of the public to be heard — not when it might have mattered, anyway.

Lefebvre, the PIO, told me that “before we did anything,” Aurora officials notified the many Denver neighbors who live along the sewer’s route. Those property owners were invited to two public meetings at a Green Valley Ranch recreation center, where Aurora representatives were prepared to explain the project and answer questions. But those two meetings took place in November, 2022 — long after the plans were final. The meetings were strictly to provide information, not to hear potential concerns that might have modified the plans, which were already locked in place.

Aurora’s contractors were already oiling their chainsaws and warming up their bulldozers.

Lefebvre listed over 20 Denver offices that had some notice or input during the years-long planning. Several divisions of Denver Parks and Recreation, which oversees Denver’s public open spaces and trails, were on the list. One of those divisions was Denver Forestry, which sees its job as preserving Denver’s tree canopy.   

In an interview, Rickenbacker, the operations manager of Denver Forestry, said he wasn’t sure that his department was invited to “all those meetings,” but he acknowledged having at least some opportunity to review Aurora’s plans.

Was there an opportunity, I asked Rickenbacker, to say, Hey, don’t even run that sewer through the open space and natural area—run it under the city streets? “Typically,” he replied, “we try to keep most utilities in the street.” But with this project, by the time the Forestry Department was included in any discussions, it was already a given that the sewer was going through the First Creek corridor. Rickenbacker declined to say how he received that message or from whom.

A round of Bureaucratic Pinball

The public’s first potential opportunity to learn that Aurora would dig up Denver’s open space was perhaps in November, 2022. That’s when an ordinance approving an agreement between Denver and Aurora appeared on the Denver City Council website. But there was no media coverage, and council members apparently regarded Aurora’s plan as routine and noncontroversial. The project sailed through both a council committee and the full city council, unanimously, on a consent agenda, with no staff report and without discussion.

The Denver staff’s written request asking the council to approve the agreement with Aurora contained only a short paragraph describing Aurora’s project. It said Aurora had agreed to improve a particular crosswalk and make improvements to portions of a Denver Parks trail. It also said that Aurora would be “restoring any impacted [Denver Parks and Recreation] parks and open spaces.”

The document listed Lisa Lumley as the “contact person with knowledge of [the] proposed ordinance.” Lumley is the director of real estate in Denver’s department of finance. I thought Lumley, as the “contact person with knowledge,” could explain the process for Aurora to get permission to carve a path of desolation through Denver’s open space.

No luck getting an interview. In a round of Bureaucratic Pinball (I’m the ball; they’re the bumpers), I was shunted off to a public information officer in the Denver finance office.

The public information guy asked me to provide written questions. I complied. I noted that the short paragraph directed to Denver’s city council stated that the First Creek corridor was “the most feasible and economical alternative.” I asked whether there was a study or a memo that had reached that conclusion. I also asked if there had been an opportunity at some point in the planning for the public to be heard.

What I got? Silence. When I pressed for a response three days later, I was directed to Denver’s Parks Department — and then back to Aurora’s public information officer.

First sign of trouble

For unsuspecting neighbors, the project finally began emerging into public view seven months ago, in February. One neighbor, alarmed, saw a spray-painted X on healthy trees along the trail and creek immediately behind his house. That prompted him to contact city officials. [See “The Orange X Of Doom” sidebar at the end of this story.]

Emails I reviewed indicate that, when the trees started falling, residents began to express concern. Word came down from Scott Gilmore,  deputy manager of Denver’s Parks Department: All inquiries about the sewer project should be directed to Elizebeth Lefebvre — the same Aurora PIO to whom I was bounced by the Denver finance PIO.

Lefebvre replied to Gilmore that she was happy to field residents’ questions about the project — but many of the questions concerned Denver’s plans to replace and replant the hundreds of chopped down trees and uprooted shrubs, and she had no information about Denver’s plans.

As a result, Denver City Forester Mike Swanson and Forestry Operations Director Rickenbacker replied to some neighbors’ emails addressing questions about Denver’s plan to replace the destroyed trees. (All told, one neighbor, Ken Klink, counted 322 stumps left once the chainsaws were done with the deed.)

In an email dated Feb. 28, Swanson said that he had only just heard of Aurora’s project two weeks earlier (!) “as another resident was taken aback by these tree removals.”

Swanson noted that Denver Forestry “has been instructed” to pass on residents’ inquiries to Aurora, but he nevertheless proceeded to provide some information. Swanson wrote that Denver Forestry “received $87,500 for canopy mitigation of numerous trees for this First Creek Interceptor project back last August.”

“Asking for the monetary replacement of canopy,” Swanson wrote, “is the best we can do when it is necessary to remove trees due to construction.” Acknowledging that money “is a tepid replacement for any healthy tree(s),” he said that “maybe someday the powers-that-be will do better, but we are not at that juncture within the continuum of progress yet.” With regard to using the canopy mitigation money to replace trees, Swanson said “that can happen” — but he noted that Denver won’t replace trees where there is no irrigation.

“Wider than we would have liked”

In our interview, Rickenbacker, the Denver forester, explained that the money received from Aurora goes into a “canopy mitigation” account that is dedicated to replanting. “If we remove a tree on Denver property, or if a homeowner cuts down a street-facing tree, we require mitigation for that tree. We have to replace the canopy that was lost.”

As we reported last month, any plan to “replace” the mature trees cut down along First Creek means planting saplings somewhere else—somewhere where Denver already has irrigation to get them established. And a sapling can’t even begin to replace the canopy of a mature tree until years in the future. “It’s not a perfect system,” Rickenbacker acknowledged.

As Aurora’s PIO reports, Denver Forestry had an opportunity to review and provide input before Aurora’s engineering drawings were completely final. That included walking through the impacted area, getting eyeballs on the trees that were “in the way” of the proposed construction easement.

But for this project, Forestry didn’t believe it had much room to push back. Rickenbacker indicated that the width of the project’s  “footprint” had already been set. He acknowledged that it was “wider than we would have liked.” He did remember one particular mature tree near the eastern edge of the project that he persuaded Aurora to spare.   

“We try to save as many healthy trees as possible,” he said. At least some residents, however, believe a more thorough site inspection would have (or should have) spared more of the trees.

Replacing trees, or not

The entire length of the sewer’s path through Green Valley Ranch is through publicly-owned land within the City and County of Denver. But it turns out there’s a difference between Denver-owned land and land owned by a different public entity. In this case, the Town Center Metro District — a government entity — is listed as owner of the land occupied by the Green Valley Ranch Golf Club, as well as the area of the pond east of 54th Avenue and Dunkirk Street. Metro district land hosted many of the most majestic older cottonwoods cut down for Aurora’s project.

Aurora paid the metro district a total of $458,000 for running the sewer through the golf course — $179,800 of which was for the appraised value of the trees Aurora cut down.

Rickenbacker said that the metro district “should” use that money to replace the fallen trees. But Denver has no power to enforce that “should.” As far as Denver Forestry’s policies and practices are concerned, the metro district is a private landowner. Denver Forestry’s site visit was limited to Denver-owned open space, not the metro district property.

Will the Town Center Metro District dedicate the $179,000 it received to replanting and restoring the lost canopy? I placed a call to Brandon Wyszynski, the President of the Board of Directors of the Town Center Metro District. He is Vice President of Oakwood Homes, and a Google search shows that he is listed as a board member of multiple metro districts in Colorado.

I left Mr. Wyszynski a voicemail. I asked whether Aurora’s compensation for removed trees would be used for planting new ones. The next day I asked the same question in an email. I’ve received no response.

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series. Part 1 can be read online at greaterparkhill.org/a-sewer-runs-through-it/

 

Sidebar

The Orange X Of Doom

The Andersons’ Back Yard Opened Up To Open Space, With Mule Deer, Foxes And Healthy Trees. Not Any More

In the spring of 2022, Ryan Anderson and his wife, Tara, moved back to Colorado and bought a house. They love to be out in nature. The biggest draw for them was the backyard that abutted Denver’s First Green Open Space south of Green Valley Ranch Boulevard. The neighbors said the natural space was a “protected area.”

Mule deer came by almost every day. Ryan Anderson says he could recognize resident foxes by their distinctive markings. There were raccoons and tons of birds. He and Tara loved sitting on the back porch and watching the wildlife. The deer would come right up to their back fence.

Not any more.

When the Andersons bought their house, Aurora’s plans to plow through the open space were nearing completion. But who knew? Nothing in the real estate disclosures, nor in the couples’ conversations with realtors and neighbors, tipped them off. They had no idea that their idyllic backyard scene would soon be host to chainsaws and heavy construction equipment.

The first clue was a letter from Aurora that arrived in January. It said that that “clearing, grubbing and tree removal” was about to begin. (The Andersons’ house was just one of scores of impacted homes along the sewer’s four-mile route.)  Spray-painted orange Xs — ominous signs of impending doom — suddenly appeared on the trees. Ugly plastic orange fencing butted up against the creek side of the Andersons’ backyard fence.

Even if the sewer had to go through the open space, Ryan Anderson thought, it wasn’t necessary to cut down all those trees. He was especially upset about one particular healthy cottonwood at the very edge of the construction zone. It was almost in the creek itself and surely wasn’t in the way of any construction. Why was it necessary to cut down this healthy tree, with an estimated two-foot diameter, which provides shade, habitat, and is visited by so many birds?

Anderson soon wound up in an extended email chain with Aurora’s PIO, Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore, and Denver’s Forestry officials. He wasn’t interested in Aurora’s answer that Denver had been compensated for the trees. Gilmore’s response that Forestry had “approved” the tree removal was not helpful. Nor was Ryan interested in Denver’s answer that they can plant new trees a mile away.

“I wanted a project manager to come out here and explain why this mature healthy tree had to come down,” Anderson told me.

No one came out, and no one provided any additional explanation, leaving Anderson with a mixture of both sadness and anger. The wildlife presence has diminished. He’s disappointed that city officials wouldn’t send someone out to speak with him and address his concerns, which he knows are shared by his neighbors. Stacie Gilmore ran unopposed for reelection in the spring. In a futile personal protest, the Andersons cast write-in votes.

— Mark Silverstein