Resident says county won’t help with flooding in his Black Forest yard caused by county culvert

BLACK FOREST, Colo. (KRDO) -- A Black Forest man is asking El Paso County to step in and address flooding concerns he says are caused by inadequate county drainage.

"This spring, when the rain started coming out, of course, we had a lot of rain," said Black Forest resident Frank Rudy. "We started to notice that we couldn't walk out here because the ground was so saturated."

Since that first heavy rain, Rudy said his yard has flooded repeatedly and a culvert on his property is the culprit, carrying in hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and causing his house to flood four times.

"The pipe across the street is delivering that stormwater from state and county land into my yard," said Rudy.

Bringing forward those concerns, Rudy reached out to El Paso County Public Works, the EPA, County Commissioner Carrie Geitner, the Governor, the Department of Natural Resources, and the Department of Public Health and Environment.

He said over the last few months, only one person came from the county to look at the culvert and they told him there was nothing they could do.

"The county has said that size culvert delivers about 18,000 gallons of water a minute And it was running full bore," said Rudy. "That's a million gallons an hour."

Thursday, the county told KRDO in a written statement that another crew went out to evaluate the property.

They said they have responded to Rudy on multiple occasions and tried to help him figure out the situation, and a member of Public Works conducted a site visit.

They said the member found there were no changes to existing and natural drainage patterns, attributing the issues to "historic rainfall this year that have at times increased normal stormwater flow from neighboring properties for many property owners."

Continuing on, the county said the flow likely comes from undeveloped state land, and their hands are tied to change the path of the water flow because of Colorado law.

Still, Rudy said even if this is the way the drainage has been structured for years, it's in error.

He said there is no reason why millions of gallons of water should ever be channeled onto a resident's property.