A Sewer Runs Through It

Aurora Pipeline Carves A Path Through Denver Woods And Wetlands: Say Goodbye To Decades-Old Cottonwoods And Other Havens For Wildlife

By Mark Silverstein

For the GPHN

I was in for quite a surprise one day early in May when I ventured from Park Hill out to the far northeast side of town, headed to one of my favorite spots for taking photos of birds.

On ebird.org I’d seen that a yellow-throated vireo had been reported at a birding “hotspot” known as First Creek at Green Valley Ranch. The ebird.org website connects birdwatchers and photographers and other nature enthusiasts from all over, and the spotting of the vireo was generating a lot of excitement. I’d never seen a vireo, let alone a yellow-throated one. That was as good an excuse as any for selecting that morning’s destination.

A bike path, aptly named First Creek Trail, enters Denver’s huge Green Valley Ranch subdivision at Tower Road. Moving east, the path follows First Creek as it winds through a wide corridor of mostly-undisturbed woods and wetlands. It opens up east of Dunkirk Street onto an even wider patch of unmolested forested area abutting a delightful pond teeming with wildlife. Further east, the creek runs through and along publicly-owned land, the site of the Green Valley Ranch Golf Club. You get the picture: trees, grasses, vegetation, home for birds, deer, foxes, beavers, raccoons….

That day brought a bigger surprise than the elusive vireo: a visual shock, a jolt to the senses. West of Dunkirk Street, bulldozers had decimated the habitat, leaving a wide muddy brown swath of desolation through the formerly green wetlands. The huge machines were still there; obviously, they weren’t done doing the deed.

What was this construction project? And why was it uprooting this previously protected area that has long attracted birds and birders and people out to enjoy a stroll through nature?

Shock and dismay and sadness

News of the yellow-throated vireo had lured several friendly birders to the scene, all with their telltale binoculars. Everyone I spoke with expressed the same shock and dismay and sadness at the habitat destruction. That sadness came with a collective shrug of the shoulders, a “what can you do? (nothing)” sense of resignation — that I wanted to resist.

I wanted to know more: like at what point in the planning of this mysterious municipal project was there an opportunity for the birders and nature lovers to be heard?

I climbed over the ubiquitous orange plastic fencing and walked along the edge of the freshly-bulldozed strip, where the construction fencing butted up against the backyard fences of suburban homes. I spoke with a homeowner who reported surprise when his backyard view of the natural area had suddenly changed so dramatically for the worse. He didn’t know what the construction was for, or when it would end.

I took some photos of the devastation and the heavy equipment. A machine operator stopped to speak with me. He explained he was clearing the path for an Aurora sewer project, building a line cutting through portions of Denver and then connecting with an existing line north of 56th Avenue.

The operator didn’t feel great about plowing through the wetlands. He grew up in Colorado and lamented the open space that’s been lost to so much development. But a job’s a job.

I asked him why the sewer was routed through the wetland and open space instead of — like most sewer lines — going under city streets. The reply: “traffic” and “cost.” The bright side, the operator said, was that the contracts called for restoring all the habitat and replanting all the vegetation. He said his job was to leave the area “exactly” as it was before the construction crews arrived.

I wondered how the decision gets made to disrupt a wildlife corridor instead of disrupting automobile traffic? And, do contractors really put everything back the way it was? Is that even possible?

Apparently not.

The stumps of 322 trees

A few days later, back out in the field with my camera, I bumped into Kel Klink. Kel’s home overlooks the open space and the golf course that First Creek flows through.

Kel knows a lot about the sewer project — which is called First Creek Interceptor. He has filed open records requests. He has copies of the bid specifications, detailed engineering drawings of the project, photos, and email correspondence between neighbors and city officials.

Aurora reports that the First Creek Interceptor will move wastewater by gravity. When complete, the new pipeline will allow the city to replace three aging pumping stations that currently push Aurora wastewater north to a treatment plant in Brighton, some 20 miles to the north. A map of the sewer route shows that the First Creek Interceptor allows Aurora to take a diagonal shortcut through the natural areas of Denver’s Green Valley Ranch.

Kel has walked the four-mile route of the planned sewer through Green Valley Ranch, through all the public spaces between Tower Road on the west and Piccadilly Road (the Aurora border) to the east. He counted 322 stumps where trees were cut down earlier this year, as part of the project.

Kel offered to give me a tour. With the detailed engineering maps in hand, Kel walked me through the area. The maps, which he had obtained through his open records requests, duly showed the location of every tree. Kel pointed out the corresponding freshly-cut stumps at our feet.

Some stumps were huge—four and five feet in diameter (I measured).

The maps show that when it’s finished the sewer line itself will travel along a narrow easement. But the engineering maps also show a much wider swath on each side — a temporary construction easement where trees are cut down and shrubs are cleared. Kel thinks the construction easement is larger and far wider than needed, resulting in unnecessary damage to the wildlife habitat and natural areas.

“If they had sharpened their pencils when they did those drawings, maybe some of those trees could have been saved,” he said.

Replacing trees with saplings, somewhere else

Kel also showed me the note printed on each page of the engineering maps: “Remove and replace existing trees and shrubs as required for construction.” Yup, “replace” is what it says on paper. But when it comes to “replacing”trees, what happens in real life doesn’t match up.

“100 Year Old Cottonwood Trees Are Being Cut.” That’s the subject line of an email exchange that one of Kel’s alarmed neighbors initiated with Denver City Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore. With photos included, the email questioned whether the construction could be accomplished with less destruction to the trees and the wetlands. Kel’s neighbor offered to give city officials a tour so they could see the devastation firsthand.

Councilwoman Gilmore responded that the trees had been approved for removal by Denver Forestry, which had issued a permit. As for replanting, Gilmore enclosed a few sentences from Denver Forestry explaining that the removed trees actually would not be replaced.

In a later email, Denver Forestry Operation Manager Ben Rickenbacker explained that “these trees needed to be removed as part of the pipeline project.” He said that Denver won’t plant trees where it doesn’t have functioning irrigation. To replace the old-growth canopy lost from the sewer project, Denver will plant saplings in nearby parks, where there is irrigation.

Denver officials didn’t accept the offer of a tour of the impacted area — which is a stone’s throw from then-Mayor Michael Hancock’s house. Kel’s neighbors have been understandably disappointed in the City’s response. In my efforts to learn more, I’ve met additional neighbors who are also disheartened at the impacts of the construction. One resident says she is distressed by noticeably less wildlife activity during her morning walks by the pond. Another characterized the tree-cutters in X-rated terms when emailing photos to me.

What I’ve learned so far is that “replacing” mature trees that are “in the way” means planting a sapling somewhere else — preferably in a nearby park. Still unanswered though, is why all these trees and all this wetland “needed” to be cleared.

Could the sewer have been routed under city streets instead? Could the construction easement have been narrower to minimize the impact on natural areas? What is the process for Aurora to get the OK to dig up Denver’s trees and wetlands? When the decisions to bulldoze ahead with the project were made, was there anyone to speak up for the wetlands, for the trees, for the habitat that shelters the wildlife?

Read more next month. Oh, and I almost forgot: That first day I was there, the yellow-throated vireo did make an appearance. I spotted him in a tree that was still standing.

 

Cottonwood Condo

Aurora’s Sand Creek Park Pays Homage To A Tree That Provides Critical Habitat For Wildlife

Aurora’s sewer project has felled mature cottonwoods along First Creek Trail in Denver. Yet one of Aurora’s own municipal parks features a tribute to the trees, which provide important ecosystems for wildlife.

The Cottonwood Discovery Area, in Sand Creek Park at 2700 Peoria St., celebrates the trees as “one of Aurora’s most active wild living spaces.” The exhibit is set along one of the trails, amidst stands of old Cottonwoods. It includes a totem pole-like art structure, along with an educational placard, describing the critical habitat that the trees support. This is what it says:

“Have you ever looked inside the bark out into the branches of a Cottonwood Tree? If you did, you’d find one of Aurora’s most active living spaces: The Cottonwood Condo. Like humans use condominiums as places to go about daily life, wildlife uses cottonwood trees as places to go about the daily business of eating, sleeping, having little ones and finding shelter from wind, rain and sun.

“Take a look up into the branches of a nearby cottonwood, or peer under some loose bark. What do you see?

• Squirrels, raccoons and songbirds doze in the shade of cottonwood leaves and branches on a warm summer day.

• Great horned owls, red-tailed hawks and great blue herons use the canopy at the top as nesting spots to raise future generations of birds to hunt, fish and swim along Aurora’s riparian corridors.

• Beetles, centipedes, millipedes, roly-polies, earthworms and other decomposers feast on wet, rotting parts of the tree at the base.

• Snakes and toads find shelter in holes in the trees, under bark, and in soft, rotting wood of fallen cottonwoods.”

— Mark Silverstein