Thank you to City of Boulder

[Deb Crowell]

 

OK so you may not all be in the space yet to hear this but I would love for our neighborhood to send a “thank-you” to the city of Boulder planners.  Thanks to all of their work for the past 25 plus years, we still have a neighborhood.  In a way, we’re lucky we’re in the 100 year flood plain since there have been so many measures taken to protect our neighborhood.  If the river had had its way, it would have gone straight after going under the Broadway bridge but thanks to the closed ditch diversion canted right, this did not happen.  Brilliant!  Not sure if you all saw the log jam caught on the railings that circumvent the ditch closure but we got extra protection and therefore most of the water pushing downstream went river right instead of straight (except for when the Thursday night “surge” superseded it).

 

Deb

[Andrea]

Dearest All,

I can't thank you all enough. You are the most generous neighbors anyone could have. Loren and I were literally frozen in indecision when you all showed up and supported and worked beyond our wildest expectations.

Up next for us is that the truck to haul stuff is coming at 4:30. I hired him because he will dump it for us. That leaves Diane's truck for someone else.

Having said that; if anyone is available at that late afternoon hour, we could obviously use the help loading the truck.

On another note: for anyone who has a dehumidifier in your basement it helps to cover upstairs vents with heavy plastic and duct tape. I will go do Mary and Maria's and tape their vents tomorrow, if they want. I can help with that in anyone's home. 

Thank you all again and again .

Andrea and Loren.

 

On Sep 16, 2013, at 5:21 PM, Deb Crowell <debcr...@live.com> wrote:

 

OK so you may not all be in the space yet to hear this but I would love for our neighborhood to send a “thank-you” to the city of Boulder planners.  Thanks to all of their work for the past 25 plus years, we still have a neighborhood.  In a way, we’re lucky we’re in the 100 year flood plain since there have been so many measures taken to protect our neighborhood.  If the river had had its way, it would have gone straight after going under the Broadway bridge but thanks to the closed ditch diversion canted right, this did not happen.  Brilliant!  Not sure if you all saw the log jam caught on the railings that circumvent the ditch closure but we got extra protection and therefore most of the water pushing downstream went river right instead of straight (except for when the Thursday night “surge” superseded it).

 

Deb

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[Greg Gauthier]

Deb,

I have now heard that our flood was more like a 45 yr flood event. Boulder Creek topped at 6000 cfs and would have topped at 12,000 cfs in a 100 yr event. I am not sure if that changes anything…….but I ready do not want to see a 100 yr flood.  I just bought flood insurance which goes into effect immediately unlike hurricane insurance. This does change Oct 1^st though…. and then you have to wait 30 days. 

greg

 

From: Deb Crowell [mailto:debcr...@live.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 11:10 AM
To: Greg Gauther
Subject: Next GGNA Meeting: Thank you to City of Boulder

 

How about we put it on our next neighborhood agenda.....so everyone can sign???

 

 

 

From: Greg Gauthier

Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 6:34 PM

To: 'Deb Crowell'

Subject: RE: [Goss-Grove] Thank you to City of Boulder

 

I totally agree!!!! We got lucky on this one.

Greg Gauthier

--

[Melanie]

All in all I am pretty dang impressed with the city of boulder myself...
This is what I am going by currently and all I have seen or heard regarding flood levels, where did you get the info regarding the 45 yr flood...would love to check it out.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder-flood/ci_24148258/boulder-county-colorado-flood-2013-survival-100-rain-100-year-flood
 From the article

"The Camera tweeted word at 3:23 p.m. from the U.S. Geological Survey that the storm now qualified as what most refer to as a 100-year flood, although that agency no longer uses that terminology. That determination was based on a creek flow of 4,500 cfs Thursday morning on Boulder Creek at North 75th Street"

"
Russ Schumacher, an assistant professor in the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, calculated that the rain the city of Boulder experienced has a less than 1-in-1,000 chance of happening in any year. That, he acknowledged, would translate to what would commonly be termed a 1,000-year rain event."

[Melanie]

Aha...Yeah wouldn't want to see what a 100 year flood (or whatever you call it!) would be like...

http://theenergycollective.com/roger-pielke-jr/277361/how-fantasy-becomes-fact

"A big problem with Time's article is that Boulder did not actually experience a "1,000-year flood." In fact, according to an analysis presented by fellow CU faculty member John Pitlick yesterday, using standard hydrological methods, Boulder experienced between a 25- and 50-year flood. (I am focusing here on Boulder, I have not seen similar analyses for other Colorado streamflows, though they are sure to come.) Pitlick further noted that the flood waters did not reach the 50-year mark on the Gilbert White memorial"

Food for thought, though I still think City of Boulder did a great job!
Melanie

[Greg Gauthier]

Here is the article that I was referring to.

greg

[Deb Crowell]

I’m pretty sure that water in that ditch is “owned” by someone downstream.  Actually, the shut off gate to the ditch at Broadway was reinforced by logs and other debris that wrapped around the fencing so we had extra protection until the “surge” came along which surpassed the debris and the gate.  The gate is canted river right such that it did an excellent job of pushing all water to river right.  (that in high water wants to go straight).  I’m sure that in the future, as bridges need to be replaced, that the city will widen/heighten bridges (as they have been doing over the years throughout the city) over our ditch.  The bottom line is that the ditch takes that bend river left between 18th and 19th in order to go under Canyon.  When the water overflows the banks, that’s the predominant cause for our neighborhood flooding. I can’t imagine that they’d want to try to reinforce that ditch through the Whittier neighborhood etc.....there are too many curves, too much private property and not a lot of room!  The path of least resistance is down Goss which is why most of the water ended up in the McGuckin’s parking lot and through Sunflower.......In historic floods our neighborhood, per a review by the Daily Camera, was under 4 feet of water.  We made out better than a lot of other neighborhoods because they have not been the focus of all the flood mitigation efforts as ours has. 

 

 

From: Stephen Haydel

Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 9:10 AM

To: Melanie

Cc: Goss-Grove ; Deb Crowell

Subject: Re: [Goss-Grove] Re: Next GGNA Meeting: Thank you to City of Boulder

 

We definitely need to have a discussion of the Farmers Ditch that flooded our neighborhood with the City and Owners of the ditch. 

Does it need to have a better cut off dam at Boulder Creek? Does it need to be made deeper so it doesn't clog up with debris under streets? Does it need to be filled in as it could always be a flooding problem.

It got clogged up under 19th St. between Goss and Canyon and that caused severe flooding in our neighborhood.

 

A lot of work has been done on Boulder Creek with bridges and flow. Time to start looking at other water/flooding sources in the area...

 

Stephen Haydel

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[Stephen Haydel]

We definitely need to have a discussion of the Farmers Ditch that flooded our neighborhood with the City and Owners of the ditch. 

Does it need to have a better cut off dam at Boulder Creek? Does it need to be made deeper so it doesn't clog up with debris under streets? Does it need to be filled in as it could always be a flooding problem.

 It got clogged up under 19th St. between Goss and Canyon and that caused severe flooding in our neighborhood.

A lot of work has been done on Boulder Creek with bridges and flow. Time to start looking at other water/flooding sources in the area...

Stephen Haydel

On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 5:18 PM, Melanie <melaniel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Diane Fritz]

Yep, parroting what Deb said!  We did pretty well with most of the water getting funneled into Boulder Creek proper with lots of great engineering.  Farmer's ditch will never be filled in.  Water rights are too entrenched/important in this state for a near-one-off event to change those delivery systems.  (But we can talk about how those delivery systems are structured.)  For example, I was on a work call the week following the flood talking about the state's water plan, and no one mentioned the flood. !!!   (Stephen, we can talk about this over wine!  :)

I was exceedingly lucky in this event and am coming from a state of no-harm-done.  But I attribute much of our overall neighborhood survival to the city's flood management.  Kudos to them!

--Diane

[loren weinberg]

While we are considering thanking the Planning Dept., I would like to suggest that we also thank the managers of our city-owned water utility, whose planning resulted in us having clean drinking water delivered to our homes throughout the flood and recovery.  Pretty cool.       Loren Weinberg

[Greg Gauthier]

We didn’t loose power either.

[David Secunda]

I think a relevant topic for discussion for our next meeting is “mobilizing the neighborhood for action in an emergency”. I think there could have been a potential to mitigate damage in the hood if we had banded together early and done some sand bagging. Easy to say in 20/20 hindsight, but could be worth thinking about for the future. With all the complexities of water ditches and their management, sometimes a bit of quick action can avoid disaster.

 

------------------------------------------------

David Secunda

da...@secunda.net

Office:     720-249-2412

Cell:        303-589-8975

Fax:        720-398-6204

------------------------------------------------

 

From: goss-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:goss-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of loren weinberg

Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 7:42 AM
To: Diane Fritz
Cc: Deb Crowell; GGNA