Highway 24 spillway put to the test during flood, mudslide

The Highway 24 spillway could be once again put to the test with more rain making its way into parts of Southern Colorado. The spillway was put in place after the Waldo Canyon fire and the severe flooding that followed.

All day, dozers, plows, and dump trucks hauled sand and mud off Highway 24.

It’s a lot of work for CDOT crews. But it could’ve been worse if the spillway wasn’t here, according to Supervisor, Brad Bauer.

“It did its job. It captured as much sediment as it could. When you have that much sediment coming down, it’s still going to come out on the road,” said Bauer.

Since the Waldo Canyon fire, mitigation work along this stretch has been a priority. But when the storm hovered over the canyon Monday night, it took Lono Ho’ala back to 2013.

“Oh no here it is again,” he said.

He owns Holistic Wellness Center, right across from the spillway, and remembers when water gushed off the burn scar, down the mountain. He got the same feeling Monday night.

“Here comes this big wall of water again, it was amazing,” he said.

Business owners believe that if the spillway was not in place, their business may be gone.

“Because they built that big rock thing across the street, it tends to divert the water to Manitou. It would have been a different outcome had that not been there,” said his wife, Kaikelani Ho’ala.

She says dealing with this kind of weather comes with being in this location.

“Last week we had big rock slides from the rain and they had to close the road several times because of the rock slides. So it happens, we’re just in a canyon and things like that happen,” she said.

But these days, they don’t rely on the spillway to save their business. A cement wall was just installed to protect against flood waters and mud.