John Berggren lives on Edgewood Drive in Old North Boulder. His house backs up to Goose Creek that jumped its banks in the 2013 floods.
“2013 was terrifying,” Berggren said, adding that the creek waters not only reached his house, but “Edgewood Drive became a roaring river.”
Berggren and his roommate considered evacuating, but after carrying his dog through knee-deep moving water to reach his car, he realized the water would prevent any attempt to drive. “So at one point I was basically stuck.”
Boulder’s flood mitigation plan for Upper Goose and Twomile Creeks aims to make Berggren’s home and hundreds of others safer from floods. On the stretch behind Berggren’s home, known as Reach 6, the plan involves drastically widening Goose Creek’s bed to better accommodate floodwaters, hopefully preventing them from spilling into yards and roadways. But this widening would require repurposing Berggren and others’ backyards. A draft design was presented to the Boulder City Council in May 2023 and received approval to move forward. The project will move to a more detailed design phase early next year.
Berggren voted to approve the plan before it got the greenlight from council, because he is on the city’s Water Resources Advisory Board — which advises councilmembers on utility issues, like flood infrastructure. “I was really excited,” Berggren said of being presented the project. “We get flood protection. We get pulled out of the flood zone. We would also not have to buy flood insurance, which is pretty expensive.”
Not everyone, however, welcomed the Upper Goose Creek plan. Many living in the area opposed their properties shrinking and expressed concern about the impact on a wildlife corridor that runs behind their homes.
The escalating debate over this stretch of the project echoes past city development conflicts, like the controversy surrounding the South Boulder Creek mitigation project. And it marks the beginning of a new wave of battles as the city tries to protect its residents living in flood-prone areas. Much of Boulder was built before modern floodplain management, leaving many homes and buildings at risk in Boulder’s 16 different drainages — more so as climate change increases Boulder’s flood risk.
But protecting those homes will require transformation of the landscape, creating detractors.
Read: Boulder’s $40 million flood project is a possible preview of dozens more battles to come
Last spring, critics of the Reach 6 portion of the Upper Goose Creek/Twomile Creek mitigation project formed a group called the Edgewooders, distributing mailers and challenging the city’s communication with residents, for which officials have apologized. While the project remains on schedule, the Edgewooders are now pushing for major design changes that could delay the project and increase costs. The city has agreed to consider these changes.
For Berggren, he feels this vocal group crowds out those who support the project as is.
“I totally appreciate discourse about municipal projects,” he said. “But for me it got really disappointing when I heard that some folks along Edgewood Drive didn’t want to speak up, and say they were either agnostic or in support of the project, because they were concerned about the blowback they would get.”
About 760 structures currently exist in the 100-year flood zone for the two creeks merging into Lower Goose Creek. The plan, approved by city council in May, would take more than two-thirds of them out of that floodplain.
Brian Bennett heads the Edgewooders, though he doesn’t live on Edgewood Drive. He lives on the other side of the “wildlife corridor” on Tyler Road. His home is not in the flood zone. In an interview with Boulder Reporting Lab, Bennett was emphatic that he doesn’t oppose flood mitigation or the Upper Goose Creek/Twomile Creek project.
“We do not believe that mitigation is unnecessary,” Bennett said of the Edgewooders. “We also believe that there are alternatives that can be taken that won’t destroy the wildlife corridor.”
Bennett added that the Edgewooders just want city staff to carefully weigh the environmental impact of the proposed flood mitigation. “Tearing down these huge 200-plus trees we don’t believe is the way to go,” Bennett said of the mature trees lining the creek, many of which would have to be taken out should the project proceed as is.
Referring to the City of Boulder’s Climate Initiatives Department and its efforts to increase Boulder’s tree canopy, Bennett pointed to a NOAA-funded study revealing that areas of Boulder with more trees can be almost 20 degrees cooler on a warm day. He argued there’s a contradiction between such climate initiatives and the potential destruction of the wildlife corridor for flood mitigation, urging exploration of alternative solutions.
Joe Taddeucci, the City of Boulder’s director of utilities, said at the request of the Edgewooders, city staff are looking again into an option to direct floodwaters through piping underneath Edgewood Drive rather than through the creek. That solution, along with other options, was examined in an initial feasibility study and dismissed because it didn’t “stack up” against the options presented to city council on cost and ease of maintenance, he said.
“A piped option could be feasible,” Taddeucci said. “It will likely cost a whole lot more.”
He added that installing a pipe under Edgewood Drive large enough to convey Goose Creek’s floodwaters would present challenges and take longer. Already gas lines and other city utilities, like wastewater and treated water, are buried under the road.
“But we work for the community,” he said. “So if there’s a feasible alternative to put it in a pipe and people are okay with the additional cost and it gets council approval … and that’s what the community prefers, that’s what we’ll do.”
Taddeucci said that as long as the chosen plan moves floodwater out of town, it still benefits the community, even if it’s not what city staff would have chosen.
Communication, or lack thereof
Detractors of the project have decried city staff’s community outreach as insufficient. “The majority of residents don’t even know that there is a $40 million flood mitigation project in the city,” Bennett said. “We find that very frustrating.”
Taddeucci apologized to residents for this perceived lack of outreach. And in a recent community newsletter, he announced the hiring of a new city staff member, Angela Urrego, who will focus on outreach for flood mitigation projects and will seek to “strengthen relationships with individuals directly along the Goose Creek corridor.” But he also told Boulder Reporting Lab that he believes city staff have worked hard to get community input and that such criticism is common when people get news they don’t want to hear.
“If the news that we’re delivering as city staff is unwelcome for a group of community members, it’s quite common for there to be criticism of the communication,” he said.
City staff have already incorporated several Edgewooders’ requests into the plan. Less floodwater is now slated to move through Reach 6 for potentially less intrusive construction. The Edgewooders have also vehemently opposed public access to the wildlife corridor, though city staff have said public access was never in the plan. No bike path would run along the widened creek.
In the end, Berggren, whose day job is developing water policy on the Colorado River, said achieving flood resilience involves navigating trade-offs and reconciling often competing values — finding a balance, for instance, between flood protection, wildlife habitat preservation, carbon sequestration, shade, property values and costs.
“One of the biggest challenges I’ve learned in my career is: Everything with water is incredibly complicated,” Berggren said. “There are almost always multiple conflicting values around water decision-making. And there’s no universally right answer where everyone is going to get what they want.”
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