Creek Restoration Walks: “But We Don’t Get Hurricanes in Denver”
Halloween 2012 in the mid-Atlantic region of this country was unforgettable. Superstorm/Hurricane Sandy caused enormous property damage and loss of life, especially in the states of New Jersey and New York. The “City that Never Sleeps” learned the always-painful lesson of high water meeting buildings and infrastructure on low ground. The learning of that lesson generally includes the repetition of the mantra, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Until this month’s column, I have refrained from using the word, “I”. Whenever possible, I will continue to do so in the future.
A year ago, I watched via TV as Hurricane Irene devastated portions of Vermont, including communities and valleys I know very well from weekly winter ski trips as a young boy living in the suburbs of Boston, and from my undergraduate years at a college in New Hampshire immediately across the Connecticut River from Vermont. I watched in the same way, but with less intimate familiarity with the territory being flooded, as Sandy unloaded her wind and rain. I don’t need to tell you about the impact of Sandy, either on the physical structures or on the people affected. Instead, I will move on to the perspective of a veteran of more than 30 years of floodplain management work in Colorado (and a couple of volunteer trips to post-Katrina Mississippi).
Flood disasters are devastating. Just ask those who remember the 1976 Big Thompson Canyon flood, or the more recent Fort Collins flood. Ask the people of Buffalo Creek who experienced first a wildfire and then a post-wildfire flash flood. The list of big and small floods in Colorado goes on. That list includes severe floods on Cherry Creek and the South Platte River, which are the reason that we now have reservoirs like Chatfield and Cherry Creek.
You may be aware that on the east side of Denver, there are a number of flood sources besides the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. Several are included on FEMA’s maps for the City and County of Denver:
Harvard Gulch flows west from University Hills Mall (Yale and Colorado Boulevard) along Yale Avenue to the South Platte.
Goldsmith Gulch flows northwest from the Tech Center to Bible Park (south of Yale a little east of Monaco), and then along Monaco to Cook Park and on to join Cherry Creek.
In northeast Denver, Sand Creek and its tributary, Westerly Creek are both included on FEMA’s mapping.
These four streams each have the potential property damage and loss of life. If Colorado’s weather, including summer rainstorms, is becoming more volatile due to climate change, each of these streams could experience future floods beyond what we in our short history with this land (from about 1858 to 2012) have ever seen. That risk is one of the multiple reasons that I promote greenways in this part of Denver, as well as in other places.
In New Jersey and New York, I would strongly recommend serious consideration of open space as a major component of the re-establishment of communities. Some of the places that were flooded severely cannot be engineered into being sustainable locations for human-constructed buildings and/or infrastructure.
An expert in floodplain management, Brian Hyde leads a regular Creek Restoration Walk. He wants your feedback at westerly_connect_brian@comcast.net or 720-939-6039.