Boulder’s treacherous journey to flood recovery and resilience

By Lars Gesing

Meteorologists estimate that one inch of rain generally equals about a foot of snow, depending on the snow’s density, of course. That means early December’s 6-inch snowfall, inconvenient as it may have been, was the equivalent of about a half-inch of September rain.

Now flash back just three months, when dozens of Colorado communities were drowned in the misery of a relentless surge of rainwater, mud and debris that broke its way through major portions of the state’s Front Range and Eastern Plains.

Seventeen inches of rain poured down during those eight days in mid-September. Do the math — that’s somewhere around 17 feet of snow, if that precipitation had come this month. As rain, though, the water came down as what the National Weather Service quickly described as a 1,000-year event. The scars it carved into canyons and communities alike will remain palpable for years to come.

In those three months that have passed since the flood, the city of Boulder has managed to re-establish a facade of normalcy. City life soon fell back into routines once the waters receded and the worst – meaning most visible – impacts had been cleaned up.

Yet much work still remains to be done. The city plans to complete repairs of the water system and wastewater facility by spring 2014 and restore a majority of city areas to pre-flood conditions by the end of 2015.

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Also, as nearly one-third of all Colorado households damaged by floodwaters lie within Boulder and about 15 percent of all city households were damaged (see graph) three months is barely enough to get back to normal.

Just ask Michele Vion and you’ll learn how fresh the wounds cut by disaster still are.

Physically ripping out the toilet

While the floodwaters spared Vion’s family home in South Boulder near Table Mesa, five inches of raw sewage accumulated in her basement.

A Boulder City Council summary of the flood noted: “The majority of impacts were located outside of regulatory floodplains due primarily to groundwater and sewage backups.”

Vion translated the official jargon: “The sewage came literally out of every hole.”

In her desperation, she ripped the toilet out of the ground with her bare hands, hoping to cap the welling fountain it had turned into. It did not work.

“At some point, we just gave up and waited for it to be over,” Vion said. She and her family waited six days.

Three months later, Vion’s basement is still a construction site. To physically restore normalcy in her home, the mother of five had to spend $40,000. A sewage insurance policy paid her $5,000, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cut a $2,000 check. Vion will spend years to repay the remaining $33,000 through a low-interest loan.

She shares her fate with many families across the city. Some, like Christine and Ari Rubin who suffered an estimated $30,000 damage, were covered by FEMA flood insurance they had just recently bought after the city mailed a postcard to their home advising them to do so. But many others are now shaken with regret because they did not do the same thing.

Faced with many residents’ anger, the city has since deliberated over possibilities to prevent similar damage from occurring. Councilwoman Suzanne Jones urged city council during a Dec. 3 “lessons learned” meeting to take immediate action.

“If we have another flood and we have these kinds of sewer backups again, people will have our heads if we haven’t at least looked at this,” she said.

Flood recovery costs $43 million

Jeff Arthur, director of the Boulder utilities division, estimated the city will need $400 million to improve existing wastewater and stormwater infrastructure to a level where it would be able to withstand a disaster like this year’s flood. Usually, his department spends about 1 percent of that amount, or $4 million, on improvements.

He told Jones during the meeting that it was a question of how much investment the city was willing to make over time.

With an already tight budget, money is scarce within city government post-flood. Recovery costs keep rising and are currently estimated at $43 million.

That number includes repair bills for more than 50 damaged city buildings; water, sewer, and stormwater infrastructure; Open Spaces and Mountain Parks (OSMP) restoration, sediment and debris removal as well as repair costs for damaged roads and sidewalks.

FEMA will reimburse 75 percent of the city’s recovery costs, another 12.5 percent of expenses will flow back into city pockets from the state capitol, leaving Boulder with a bill of least $5 million. The bulk of that money comes from a disaster reserve fund and flex repair dollars, pretty much emptying those pots.

The situation left Boulder Mayor Matt Appelbaum worried about “the next event that is going to happen without those funds,” whether it would be a fire – “or something else.”

The immediate impact on the city’s financial situation is even worse. Boulder Chief Financial Officer Bob Eichem told city council it would take FEMA between six months and two years to transfer the money back onto city bank accounts.

However, he said, they wanted to “rebuild the reserves within one year.”

More financial help is coming from Washington, D.C. On Dec. 5, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper announced that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved a $63 million cash injection “to help our communities recover from the flood.”

Days after the floods hit town, then-candidate and now elected councilman Sam Weaver said the event would “give the city a chance to assess how we did with the flood” and improve accordingly.

Three months later, those mitigation efforts have gathered momentum.

“We don’t want to take things back to the way they were, but we want to make them better,” Eichem said. And city manager Jane Brautigam made a case during a recent city council meeting to recover from the flood in a way that would leave the community “more resilient than before.”

While Mayor Appelbaum supports the city’s mitigation efforts, he emphasizes financially sound decisions, distributing existing funds to where they are most needed.

“For certain types of floods, there is just nothing we can do,” he said. “Especially because the water doesn’t always go where we think it is going.”

City trying to help aching business community

According to Boulder Chamber of Commerce CEO John Tayer, those in need are to a great extent local businesses.

“They have borne a heavy toll in terms of infrastructure damage and business disruption,” Tayer said.

The Canyonside Office Park at 100 Arapahoe St. was completely destroyed by the September floods. Credit: U.S. Small Business Administration

Flood-related closures and dislocations ranging from reduced sales traffic to lost inventory worsened the situation.

As Brautigam noted in a memo sent to city council members on Dec. 3, the non-profit organization Downtown Boulder Inc. still receives calls from people asking if it was possible again for them to get to Boulder after the floods.

Tayer said there was a general sense that the flood has had a long-term economic impact because residents and tourists have reduced disposable income to spend at retail stores and in restaurants around town.

“Finally, the floods dampered tourism to our community,” Tayer said.

The Chamber president himself was among those who had to gut their basements after the floods. As did so many others, the Tayer family dealt with serious stress. His wife, Molly, the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder, had to respond to a number of unique challenges herself. It was her task to ensure that those who were displaced in the aftermath of the flood still had a chance to vote in the November elections.

Boulder city government tried to respond to local businesses struggles by partnering with Downtown Boulder Inc. and Twenty Ninth Street to run the marketing campaign “Buy into Boulder.” The ads placed in late November and December are supposed to remind holiday shoppers that for every $100 spend in Boulder, $3.41 flows into the pockets of community services and programs.

The more the city sends the message “buying and dining local,” the more money it makes through sales taxes.

New data from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) shows just how much local businesses need help to get back on their feet.

The SBA has approved $7.5 million in business and economic injury loans for businesses from all around the county that were affected by the flood.

SBA spokesperson Garth MacDonald said he was unable to break down the data to city-level, but his organization would “work with Boulder County applicants to fully complete and process applications” that have yet to be approved.

Flood Rebuilding & Permit Information Center there to assist

Despite all the efforts, it is common political consensus that recovery efforts can be successful only in cooperation with the county.

Therefore, Boulder County opened the Flood Rebuilding & Permit Information Center at its Land Use Department in downtown Boulder three weeks after the disastrous surges hit the Front Range.

The center is a “one-stop portal for people with their various flood-related questions and issues,” staff member Cindy Pieropan said.

Up to six employees deal with a couple dozen daily inquiries, a lot of them related to damaged or destroyed homes, access issues because of broken roads or problems with the septic system.

Pieropan said the center would remain open for at least one, but more likely two more years to deal with the aftermath of the flood.

“A flood is different than for example a fire, which doesn’t damage roads,” she explained. With winter approaching rapidly and with brutal force, it becomes increasingly hard to repair roads before spring, Pieropan said, pointing out that flood impacts tended to be long-term.

Boulder County Flood Recovery Manager Gary Sanfacon explained in a recent video-message to citizens that debris was still one of the core issues in the recovery process.

“A lot of debris has come up on private properties,” Sanfacon said. It was also still in the creeks and could pose future hazards, which is why the county started to implement a debris pick-up program, a collaborative citizen cleaning effort.

Meanwhile, the city of Boulder has managed to break down the number of key objectives for the near-term flood recovery to five. A memo to city council members lists the following activities:

1. Help people get assistance;
2. Restore and enhance infrastructure;
3. Assist business recovery;
4. Pursue and focus resources to support recovery efforts; and
5. Learn together and plan for the future.

The city also focusses on restoring the 10 percent of trails in the open spaces that remain closed at this point. A special case is the popular Royal Arch Trail. It was the most severely damaged of all trails in the system. OSMP director Mike Patton and his team keep evaluating best practices on how to rebuild Royal Arch Trail.

In his letter to the editor of the Daily Camera dated Oct. 8, Boulder resident Jim Martin sums up the 17 lessons he learned from the flood. Despite all the misery the devastating floods brought over the city, the county, and the state, Martin’s ultimate lesson is an acknowledgement of outstanding community recovery efforts.

Martin wrote: “There is a little bit of heaven in every disaster area.”

Related links:

Flood Rebuilding & Permit Information Center: http://www.bouldercounty.org/flood/property/pages/floodrecoverycenter.aspx

Mapping the flood: https://bouldercolorado.gov/water/flood-maps

Tell your flood story: https://boulderflood2013b.crowdmap.com/main

Boulder County flood information: www.bouldercountyflood.org

Weekly Round-Up — Nov. 14

By Kendall Brunette

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER

A new study, led by researchers at NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder, found that dust from Colorado’s eastern prairies is making its way onto high-elevation Rocky Mountain snowpacks.  According to a CIRES news release, snow littered with dust particles absorbs more solar radiation, which accelerates melting.  Much of this accelerated melting occurs high in the Rocky Mountains – the headwaters of the Colorado River.  Early runoff from melting snowpack will negatively impact the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River for water.

BOULDER DAILY CAMERA

Since September’s devastating floods, the Colorado Department of Transportation and local partners have worked tirelessly to reopen highways and roads that were overtaken by water across the state.  According to the Daily Camera, only 32 miles of highway remained closed and impassable for drivers.  Out of the 485 miles of road damaged during the flooding, U.S. 34 between Loveland and Estes Park and Colorado 7 from the Peak-to-Peak Highway to Lyons are all that is left to be repaired and reopened.

BOULDER WEEKLY

A new set of proposed air quality regulations seem weak in the eyes of Colorado’s anti-fracking activists.  According to Boulder Weekly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released new air quality standards, leading the state of Colorado to update its rules which will be presented to the state Air Quality Control Commission on Nov. 21.  Environmentalists argue that the new regulations do not adequately address local air quality infractions and blame the oil and gas industry for pressuring state officials to soften the new rules.

This Week in Health & Recreation: A busy week for Gov. Hickenlooper and a brutal beating at a Denver light rail station

By Kendall Brunette

HUFFINGTON POST

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper made headlines this week as he expressed his concern about the government shutdown’s impact on Colorado’s flood recovery.  According to the Huffington Post, 20 million gallons of raw sewage were dumped into Colorado’s river systems during September’s devastating floods.  Furloughed federal officials cannot test flooded areas for diseases like E. coli because of the shutdown.  Hickenlooper cited water quality and a lack of shelter for flood victims as just two of the many casualties of the government shutdown.

7NEWS

Gov. John Hickenlooper asked the federal government for authority to reopen Colorado’s national parks, including Rocky Mountain National Park, despite the shutdown.  7News reported that President Obama agreed to allow states to use their own money to reopen national parks in an effort to lessen the economic losses associated with the park closures.  Though the federal government allowed states to pay for their own park operations, control of national parks remains in the hands of the feds.

7NEWS

The Denver Police Department seeks information about a brutal beating at one of Denver’s light rail stations.  According to 7News, five men viciously attacked and robbed 23-year-old Gregory Moscato in September.  RTD security cameras caught the attack on camera, though police still search for the suspects.  RTD increased security measures in response to the crime.  Denver Police will not release details about the victim’s condition.

A time of promise: Bob Condon of Cottonwood Farms offers a festive distraction from recent flooding

By Kendall Brunette

For Bob Condon, who owns Cottonwood Farm east of downtown Boulder, Colo., the September routine is usually just that — routine.

Condon and his wife, Amy, along with a small staff of family and friends, grow pumpkins and squash on nearly 30 acres of their 17-year-old farm.  Every September, Condon fills the back of his old pick-up truck with pumpkins of all shapes and sizes, cuts a path through his corn maze and sets out a sandwich board sign on the corner of Arapahoe Avenue and 75^th Street welcoming visitors to his farm.

Entrance to Bob Condon’s Cottonwood Farm east of Boulder
Photo by Kendall Brunette

This year, however, Condon began harvest season just a little bit differently.  As early September’s floods roared through Boulder, Condon waited anxiously for the floodwater to make its way east.  He watched his fields take on nearly 18 inches of water over just two days’ time.  Though his pumpkins seemed to practically float up and out of the ground from excessive rain, Condon avoided the devastating impact of floodwater contamination.  Many of his neighbors fared less well.

According to Farm Journal’s Ag Web, Colorado floodwaters caused an estimated $8.5 million damage to agricultural lands.

Condon worries about his harvest numbers this year because of the flooding.

“The pumpkins got very wet — they took on a lot of water, probably more than they should have, so we’re having a higher spoilage rate this year than we usually have,” Condon said.

In a normal season, Condon harvests several thousand pumpkins.  This year, he fears the numbers will be lower because of excessive moisture.

Condon noted that for some people, it will be a long time before life returns to post-flood “normal.”  He hopes his farm will serve as a welcomed distraction from the flood devastation.  Visitors of Cottonwood Farm enjoy a variety of fall festivities.  In addition to pumpkins, Condon’s farm offers a corn maze, tractor rides and farm animals for people of all ages to experience.

The young girls gravitate toward the kittens, while Grandpa and Dad engulf themselves in the tractors and farm machinery, Condon said.

Lynsey Yokum is the mother of two children, ages 3 and 4.  During their second visit to Condon’s farm, her children ran through rows of pumpkins and laughed alongside the goats.

Yokum’s children love coming to Condon’s farm to play with the farm animals every fall.

After the floods receded, Condon noticed the number of visitors began to slowly return to normal.  Boulder families flocked to Cottonwood Farm in search of festive fall fun and distraction from the flooding doldrums.

“For a lot of families, they, they’re saying they’d like to get out and do something they usually do,” Condon said.

Condon opens the rickety gates of his farm every day, free of admission, in the hopes that he can give Boulder residents something entertaining to do in the midst of flood recovery.  While he and the staff watched the torrential rains destroy some of his produce, he is not disheartened by the impacts.  Condon finds a healthy perspective on the situation and realizes that he was actually lucky to be spared some of the more serious damage and economic consequences of the flooding.

As he listens to the sound of children laughing from his small office, Condon feels a sense of fulfillment, knowing his farm offers reprieve from flood blues.  After all, how can one feel blue in this sea of orange?

Dean DeLille works as the pumpkin salesman in his fifth season at Condon’s farm.  On this day, DeLille noticed an odd-shaped pumpkin with a large bulbous outgrowth – the result of excessive water uptake during the flood.

“We had a lot of water here, but no water in any of the buildings, and it is yet to be seen what impact that has on the pumpkins long-term,” De Lille said.

Children of all ages enjoy Cottonwood Farm’s array of fall activities.
Photo by Kendall Brunette

 DeLille said several families return to Cottonwood Farm time and time again.  One family visited the farm nearly 10 times just this year.  He said people come to the farm to simply to “get their mind off of things.”

One woman visits the farm on a regular basis, staying for one or two hours each time.  She is a World War II survivor who escaped Hitler.  DeLille says she loves to come and just sit, watching the animals and looking out on the pumpkins — a type of therapy.

It is these types of personal connections that bring a smile to Condon’s face.  Despite the hard work and time required for a productive fall harvest, Condon finds joy and reward in his hard work.  His favorite time of year is not the fall after all the hard work is done, but instead, he enjoys the springtime tillage and planting.  For Condon, it is “a time of promise” — promise of a plentiful harvest, promise of laughing children and promise of festive tradition for many people seeking solace and peace despite the obstacles life throws at us.

Leave the lasagna at home — flood relief organizations can’t use homemade food

By Kendall Brunette

Colorado residents rushed to their kitchens nearly two weeks ago when epic floods swept through the state’s northern regions.  Soon after, homemade turkey sandwiches, bags of nuts and boxes of chocolate chip cookies found their way into donation centers and shelters across the state.

The only problem – most disaster relief agencies cannot accept these gracious offerings.  The reason is simple – food safety.

Members of the CU Boulder football team donated their time to serve food to flood evacuees.
Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado

As the initial flood waters receded, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, as well as various food banks and food pantries opened their doors to disaster victims in search of food, drink, shelter and safety.  Local residents who managed to remain dry and unharmed began donating food to the cause; however, many unsolicited donations were turned away at the door.

According to Patricia Billinger, communications director for the American Red Cross of Colorado, most disaster relief agencies, particularly those that receive federal funding, cannot accept food donations that are not pre-packaged or prepared in a commercial kitchen.

The Red Cross consults with a panel of doctors and health care professionals who provide guidance and recommendations for the agency, Billinger explained.

One of these recommendations is that the source and preparation methods of all food donations must follow strict health department guidelines for food safety — the same codes and regulations adhered to by restaurants.

Their goal is to ensure all food distributed to disaster victims is safe.  The Red Cross does not want to “make a bad time worse for their clients,” Billinger said.

The Red Cross is joined by several other relief agencies, including the Harvest of Hope Pantry based in Boulder, Colo.  When the floods hit Boulder County, Executive Director Barbara O’Neil and her staff opened the food pantry doors and offered food to those in need.

Unlike the Red Cross, Hope Pantry is a self-governed non-profit that receives no state or federal funding.  Because of a lack of government oversight, the food pantry is able to set its own food donation guidelines.  O’Neil agreed the first priority of the food pantry is to provide safe assistance to hungry clients.  Like the Red Cross, Hope Pantry tries to educate the public about the needs of its clients — which include canned food, bottled water and toiletry items — before donors even reach the pantry’s doors.

O’Neil noted an important distinction between food pantries, food banks and relief agencies.

“Food banks supply food pantries,” O’Neil said.  Both pantries and banks are self-governing non-profits that rely on private donations and non-government funding.  In the case of natural disasters like Colorado’s flooding, national agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army are the first to respond to the needs of victims.  After the storm passes and these nation-wide agencies leave, food pantries and banks remain to answer the lingering needs of victims.

Terry Tedeschi is the development director for Community Food Share in Louisville, Colo., a non-profit food bank.  According to Tedeschi, food pantries distribute between 15,000 and 20,000 pounds of food per year, while food banks distribute over 8 million pounds of food per year.

Tedeschi’s greatest concern is distributing food containing allergens.  Many of the homemade food donations she saw during the flood had undocumented ingredients.  These donations are subject to Boulder County Health Department food safety regulations, which include ingredient labeling and preparation restrictions.

Tedeschi, O’Neil and Billinger all stressed the importance of individuals consulting donation guidelines before baking dozens of cookies and cooking pots of stew.  Though these donations are greatly appreciated, the overarching effort to provide disaster victims with safe food takes precedence.

Boulder officials evaluate emergency responses to flood and plan additional funding for public safety

A Boulder Fire Deparment truck is fighting the floods at the intersection of 30th and Colorado on Sept. 11. Photo by Nate Brudzinski/CU Independent.

By Lars Gesing

In the aftermath of the recent historic Colorado floods, Boulder city officials and emergency departments are now evaluating the sufficiency of their response to the deluge.

“There are always people who think that we should have done more,” Mayor Matt Appelbaum said in a City Council meeting last week, “but for anybody who has been out and about, it has just been a remarkable effort for people working essentially around the clock.”

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner had his staff working 12-hour-shifts during the days of the flood, and 146 officers called in on Friday, Sept. 13. The chief pointed out that there were no reported injuries, missing people or fatalities within the city limits.

Still, not all of the operation went smoothly, Beckner said.

“By Thursday night (Sept. 12), we were no longer able to manage all the road closures. We had to let them go.”

Beckner’s department also suspended all responses to burglar alarms and minor incidents that evening.

When the waters kept rising, even police cars got stuck.

“We still had some high-rise SUV-type vehicles that were able to get through most of the time, but many of our patrol cars were grounded,” Beckner said, who the quickly confirmed that the department was addressing that particular problem by buying new vehicles, “which will give us the possibility to respond and move around not only in weather like we experienced but also in a snowstorm.”

Recommended budget includes additional funding for public safety

Before the heavy rainfalls started hitting Boulder, city officials had already emphasized their concern about public safety, distributing a fair portion of the recommended budget for 2014 on additional spending for the police and fire departments. According to the preliminary plan, the Boulder Police Department budget will amount to $32.04 million – an increase of roughly 1 percent compared to $31.75 million of approved funding in 2013. The Boulder Fire Department is even budgeted to receive a 5.6 percent raise for 2014 with a recommended $17.56 million in funding. City Council is currently debating the proposed funding tables.

In a press release, the city’s communication office pointed out that the recommended budget included funding for two new police officers and a new commander. It’s an initiative that is “part of the police department’s long-term plan to hire eight new officers and strengthen overall service and accountability to the public.”

City Council member Macon Cowles said funding for emergency crews likely can’t be reassessed based on what authorities learned from the floods.

“We can’t afford emergency resources on a daily basis that would allow us to fully respond to a flood that was maybe a once-in-500-years event,” Cowles said in an interview.

Boulder Fire Chief Larry Donner supports Cowles’ stance.

“You can plan, but you plan around the resources you have available. If we tried to staff for a 500-year-flood, there would be a rebellion within the community, because you simply cannot afford staffing for the worst possible scenario,” Donner said during the City Council meeting. “We tried to work together with other response units to maximize the resources we had available during that time.”

How much communication is good communication?

In the days following the flood, not only City Council members, but other Boulder residents expressed concern about the quality of emergency crews’ communication with the public during the disaster. CU Boulder’s student publication, the CU Independent, recently quoted peers like 19-year-old economics major Israel Kalombo: “The information released to students was sub-par, just basic information.”

In a phone interview, Malinda Miller-Huey, assistant director of CU Boulder’s Office of Media Relations, answered the accusations in the CUI report.

“It is surprising,” Miller-Huey said. “We heard very different things. We received a lot of positive feedback about processing information in a frequent and timely manner.”

City Communication Director Patrick von Keyserling said during last week’s City Council meeting that his department had to make sure it shared only official and confirmed information, but had been trying to get word out by keeping social media feeds updated and posting the latest developments on the city’s official website.

Brian Harris, 28, an Assistant Manager at Rocky Mountain Anglers on Arapahoe Avenue, was happy with the flow of information.

“Minor miscommunications are normal during a chaotic event like this,” Harris said. “I regularly Googled ‘Boulder flood’ and the first thing that came up was the alert service. I thought that one was very accurate and up-to-date. I also signed up for the city’s emergency alerts. I only learned Thursday morning (Sept. 12) before I went to the store through one of those alerts sent on my phone that there even was a real threat of flooding.”

This Week in Arts & Culture: Fall Festivals and a Reason to Get Creative

Riot Fest 2013

If the likes of old school hip-hop group Public Enemy, pop punk boy band blink-182, indie darlings Best Coast or the legendary Iggy Pop are on your radar this weekend, you must have tickets to Denver’s long-anticipated Riot Fest. Rock on!

 Boulder International Fringe Festival

Can’t make it to Riot Fest this weekend? Have no fear! Head up to Boulder for the International Fringe Festival for independent art, theatre, live performance, films, and workshops. 5280 breaks down the top Fringe events this year for Fringe newbs.

Check the Boulder Fringe official calendar for all events, including daily donation-based morning yoga classes at the Boulder Agora.  Proceeds benefit Boulder Flood Relief.

Colorado Artists Going Viral Amid Flooding

In the wake of the Colorado floods, some area artists garnered national attention. Although their art may have originally been acts of sheer expression, they’ve now gone viral, as in the case of Scott Brooks’ “Protected by Love” image and Mark Changaris’ Tears for Fears piano cover in his muddy, flooded home.

Flood waters reportedly full of contaminants

As flood recovery efforts continue throughout the state, several concerns about the condition of floodwaters are emerging. Oil, debris, and intestinal bacteria are just a few of the contaminants that have spilled into Colorado’s waterways, complicating clean-up efforts and posing a risk for public safety.

As if Colorado hasn’t experienced enough destruction in the past week, officials are now facing a 5,250-gallon crude oil spill in the South Platte River. Furthermore, National Geographic reports many of the state’s wells are also at risk, and 1,900 wells have had to be closed off to prevent leakages.

Debris removal is another huge issue confronting Coloradans. The Denver Post reported this week that state regulators were working on waivers for safety and environmental standards at landfills in order to handle the toxic refuse at city drop-off sites and debris still piled in creeks and rivers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are urging people to stay out of floodwaters to avoid infectious organisms. Hopefully, CU-Boulder students will think twice before pulling out their inner tubes after reading this Boulder Weekly article.