Strategy to resolve flash flooding on Siferd Boulevard finalized in Colorado Springs
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - Officials say that an 18-month project will start early next year to address one of the most notorious areas for flash flooding in the Pikes Peak region.
The intersection of Siferd Boulevard and Date Street -- in the middle of Spring Creek and the Templeton Gap drainage area -- has been plagued for years by high-velocity flooding during rainstorms that occasionally required emergency rescues.
The plan is the result of a March 2023 agreement between the city and El Paso County. The intersection was in county jurisdiction but has now been annexed by the city and both entities will split the project's $11 million cost.
As KRDO13 reported then, the project was supposed to start and be completed this year, but officials met delays in designing the project.
"One of which was we weren't seeing enough benefit to the floodplain in that area with the improvements we were making to the creek," said Tim Biolchini, the city's stormwater manager. "We weren't really pulling any houses out of the floodplain. And so, I made the decision to move the project upstream to Hopeful Drive, which would take about a dozen houses out of the floodplain by adding that much to the project."
The project involves permanently closing the intersection and turning it into a cul-de-sac.
"The creek will continue to flow through there," Biolchini explained. "But we'll have it in a controlled manner over drop structures, boulders or rocks, There will be no street there anymore. Stormwater will just go over the top and continue into the creek bed."
He also said that a nearby bridge over the creek contributes to flooding because water doesn't drain properly there, because of debris from homeless camps. The city has erected a fence around the creek between the intersection and the bridge.
"We've had a lot of homeless issues in there," Biolchini said. "And it's not the homeless per se. It's what they leave behind. We've had an enormous amount of trash build up in that, which becomes dangerous for everybody and gets washed downstream and into the natural channel below."
In expanding the project to take nearby homes out of the floodplain, the city has to acquire some vacant, privately-owned properties.
"We're still in the in the acquisition stage," the stormwater manager said. "There's several properties we need to acquire. Not a lot of houses. Almost no houses. We're only acquiring vacant properties that were just privately owned. The county owns some properties. The city owned some properties. So, we're getting that whole swath of properties under the city's control so we can build our project through there."
Interestingly, under the city/county agreement, residents of the nearby Park Vista South neighborhood could choose whether they wanted their homes to remain in the county or be annexed by the city.
Because years of flooding has damaged adjacent streets, the project includes repaving them -- something that several KRDO 13 viewers have asked about.
"At the end of the project, we're going to have a lot of construction traffic on all of those streets -- Date, Siferd and some of the other ancillary streets," Biolchini revealed. "And so, we'll be repaving them at the end of the project to patch them all back up and bring them up to city standard."
The project will also provide relief to the city fire department; a nearby station has been responsible for closing the floodgates during floods and reopening them afterward.
