Boulder City Council Approves Flood Plan Opposed by CU

Boulder City Council on Tuesday night gave its staff direction to proceed with a preliminary design on a flood solution for south Boulder Creek.  The more than three year process began after the 2013 flood that devastated many areas of Boulder and Boulder County.

Roz Brown reports that there was heated exchange during the city council meeting on how to mitigate flooding on a 300 acre site at US 36 and Table Mesa that is owned by CU Boulder. Flood mitigation needs to begin before the city can consider annexing the land. It would be annexed to allow the University to build more than 1,000 housing units, 8 academic buildings and recreation fields there. Ultimately council voted 6-3 to pursue a preliminary design for what’s called Variant I, using a 500 year flood scenario.

Jill Adler Grano, Aaron Brockett and Bob Yates voted against the Variant I option. CU has also criticized the Variant I option, as did many members of the public at the city council meeting and previous open houses.

Some residents of the Frasier Meadows retirement community left Tuesday’s meeting after an alternate plan was rejected by city council in favor of Variant I which they also opposed saying it places thousands of residents downstream from the site in danger. Frasier Meadows experienced extensive damage in the 2013 floods.

Variant I places a greater amount of water onto land CU hopes to develop and has been supported by a group of Boulder residents that have been trying to limit CU building on the 300 acre parcel of land.