How will Fountain Creek run?

Fountain Creek is not running high right now, but with heavy snow last week, plenty of snow in the mountains and more snow a near certainty the creek will rise.

Dwayne Simmons will be watching it when it does.

KRDO News found him doing what he loves Monday – working with his hands. He works with wood the same way that the pioneers may have done it generations ago.

Like the Simmons family themselves.

“My family moved here in 1950 from Kansas,” he said.

He’s seen a lot of changes in that time.

“The town of Fountain was smaller. The subdivisions weren’t here,” he said.

One thing that’s also changed over the years is Fountain Creek. It flows right through the Simmons family ranch.

“Gradually the creek, when it floods, gets higher and higher,” he said.

Last spring was a bad one for flooding on the creek and this spring has featured heavy snow, with more than a foot over the last few days.

So does that mean more erosion along Fountain Creek?

Greg Langer of the Natural Resources Conservation Service thinks so.

He said, “With the higher amounts of water, the amount of erosion that’s going to happen in the creek itself is going to stay at a fairly high rate.”

But that in itself doesn’t mean flooding will be an issue.

Andre Brackin, the county engineer for El Paso County, said, “The snow melt is so quick here that it rarely lends itself to flooding events.”

In fact, flooding on local creeks is not about snow, it’s about rain.

“The flooding is more from single rain events rather than snow melt,” Brackin said.

Simmons has seen it firsthand. And he’s philosophical about the behavior of the creek.

“It takes what it wants and we just have to move back,” he said.

As it continues its path through his land, and the rest of the county.

Brackin said there is little the county can do about the flooding. Their goal is to keep as much development out of the flood plain of the creek as possible.