Broken Roads a Big Hurdle in Colorado Flood Recovery

Daily News Article — Posted on September 30, 2013

(by Dona Bryson, The Wall Street Journal) BOULDER, Colo. – As officials here grapple with the aftermath of massive floods this month, it has become clear that recovery hinges on fixing the hundreds of miles of washed-out roads.

County Road in Louisville, taken out by Coal Creek flooding. Photo by Denver Post reader Lindsay Smith.

Repairing the routes is critical to getting materials and construction teams to thousands of damaged or destroyed homes, businesses, power stations and sewage systems in the roughly 1,500-square-mile region scarred by the disaster, in which eight people were killed.

Without decent roads, it would also be difficult for visitors to reach numerous Colorado mountain towns, cutting of the tourist dollars that serve as their lifeblood and imperiling their recovery. In some of these areas, many of the residents have evacuated, while those who stayed have basic supplies to last for some time.

“The officials, the bureaucrats, they misjudge the people who live up there,” said Bill Jones, who owns River Forks Inn in the Larimer County community of Drake. He and his wife evacuated by helicopter after the floods came. Of those who didn’t, he said, “They’re rugged individualists. And the reason they live up there is because they are.”

Reconstruction will take months, if not years, according to transportation and emergency officials. Rebuilding and repairing an estimated 200 miles of state highways and 50 bridges alone could cost as much as $475 million.

In Boulder County, one of the hardest-hit among more than a dozen counties struck by flooding and mudslides in the second week of September, Transportation Director George Gerstle estimates that as much as 100 miles of roads need rebuilding or repair, along with 10 bridges. It is likely to cost $100 million, 10 times his annual budget.

Roads traversed precarious mountain routes in western Boulder County, hugging creeks and rocky canyon walls. Now, “there’s no evidence of the road ever having been there” in many places, Mr. Gerstle said. “Every major road connecting the mountains to the plains has been ripped out.”

In Larimer County, north of Boulder, recovery manager Suzanne Bassinger said 35 bridges were severely damaged and 30 more were destroyed. She estimates the costs of rebuilding the bridges and roads in her county at as much as $60 million. “When a bridge is gone, it’s pretty hard to construct access,” she said.

Colorado is expecting financial help from the Federal Highway Administration’s Emergency Relief program, under which Congress has made available $1 billion for repairs from natural disasters nationwide. Vice President Joe Biden came to survey the flood damage this week and said the federal government would help Colorado rebuild.

Don Hunt, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, said his department has a $100 million contingency fund, and expects to spend all of it repairing flood damage. Mr. Hunt’s department has begun awarding contracts for initial work to be completed by Dec. 1. Some of the work will be stopgap, to ensure mountain towns aren’t cut off during the winter.

The December deadline is doable, said Corando Lozano, a project manager for Denver-based Villalobos Concrete Co., which he said has been contacted by larger design and construction firms bidding for post-flood contracts. “We’ll all pull together and make it work,” Mr. Lozano said.

Richard Wobbekind, an economist who heads the business-research division of the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, said the construction spending may amount to a mini economic stimulus for the state. But he noted that tourists who normally take in northern Colorado’s autumn colors have been asked to stay away to minimize stress on the roads this year, and said he worries that some small mountain towns may never bounce back.

Brooke Burnham, a spokeswoman for the Estes Park tourism development agency, said 50% of the jobs in Estes Park, in Larimer County, are directly or indirectly dependent on tourism, and fall is important because of both leaf peeping and elk-mating season. The town plans to go ahead with its annual Elk Fest this weekend, which attracted around 12,000 people last year.

“It’s really damaging to us when the word gets out that we’re cut off, or a ghost town,” Ms. Burnham said. “We really need guests to make sure our businesses and our workers survive the winter.”

Among the Estes Park businesses concerned about tourist access is the Stanley Hotel, which draws visitors for its stately architecture, ghost stories and claims to have inspired Stephen King’s novel “The Shining.” Although the disaster only caused the Stanley minimal damage, Dan Swanson, a manager at the hotel, said it “has absolutely hurt the business very substantially.”

“We’re just hoping that the state can do their part and get transportation, roads, back in place as quickly as possible,” he said.

Background

On repairing the roads:

CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation) is hiring emergency contractors to speed repairs. It's also getting consulting help from three Vermont transportation officials whose highway system was cut in two by Hurricane Irene in 2011.
The epicenter of flood damage lies along a triangle of highways U.S. 34 and 36 and Colorado 7 - linking Boulder, Loveland and Lyons to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. Those roads carry an average of 24,000 to 39,000 cars per day. All are extensively damaged with closed stretches, leaving people in mountain towns no easy way out.
More than 600,000 residents of Boulder and Larimer counties should expect to wait until next year or longer for construction crews to finish repairing their flooded and damaged highways.
The Colorado Department of Transportation's immediate goal is winter survival in towns built along roads curling beside canyon rivers and creeks.
The early September floods left little time this year to rebuild 18 state and federal highways partly closed by flooding. Asphalt and concrete become hard to pour below about 40 to 50 degrees, and snow often reaches the northern foothills in October.
With winter coming, "our goal is to get to where people can go from A to Z" on a patchwork of roads, said Tim Harris, CDOT's chief engineer.
In some places, highway use "might be limited to residents only," he said. In others, the department might use prebuilt military bridges to span gaps.
"What can we do as a response just to get it open?" he asked. "Can we live with a gravel road? Can we do just one lane where you'd want two or three?"
Harris listed six canyon highways in Boulder and Larimer counties as highest priorities: U.S. 34 and 36, and Colorado 7, 14, 72 and 119. But "out east, we certainly can't ignore those either," he said.
Many families along those highways took helicopters to safety. Some were warned that if they didn't, help might not come again until springtime. (from a Sept. 17 denverpost report)