Tucker-Talk

District Activities
It is difficult to say anything profound about the year 2000 that hasn’t already been said, so I won’t try. The District is prepared for the year 2000 and is as excited about the work we are planning to do as we have been for the past 30 years. The Urban Drainage and Flood Control District was created in 1969 by the state legislature. In the early years, the District only had funding for planning activities. Since the beginning in 1969, District’s activities have expanded dramatically from planning to design and construction, maintenance, floodplain management, and a myriad of supporting activities.

In the year 2000, the District’s programs will continue at an active pace. Even though master planning on major drainageways was one of the first activities of the District, requests from local governments for assistance with additional master plan studies continues at a pace that we cannot keep up with. The focus has changed with the addition of stormwater quality to the traditional drainage and flooding considerations and a reorientation from a focus on a drainageway to a watershed perspective. Master planning continues to be a key lynch pin activity because so much of our future activities are guided by these planning efforts.

The District’s floodplain management program was also one of the early efforts of the District. The thrust of floodplain management activities is non-structural and preventive in nature. Our initial thinking in the early 70s that management of the floodplains in order to prevent the construction of buildings and other structures that would be damaged during a 100-year flood is still proving to be a sound and viable direction. One of the components of the floodplain management program is the review of proposed developments in 100-year floodplains made at the request of local governments. If a developer-constructed project is designed in accordance with District criteria and built as designed, the District will make the project eligible for maintenance assistance. In most cases when this is done the District will actually maintain that facility for the local government after the project is completed. Many local governments take advantage of this maintenance eligibility feature and send their proposed floodplain developments to us for review. The development pace in the Denver area remains at a high level with no abatement in sight. Development activity historically has tended to go in cycles, but of late this cycle seems to be on a long upward trend. At the latest count we had over 100 projects in various stages of maintenance eligibility review.

Another floodplain management program that was initiated in the mid 1970s in response to the Big Thompson flood that killed approximately 150 people is the flood warning program. A small but important change this year was the leasing of space two floors above our main office to house the flood warning center. In the past, this space has been leased by the District’s contract meteorologist but this change will allow us to house the District’s equipment and the meteorological contract service in our own space. The addition of new field stations continues as well as the upgrading of the hardware and software elements of the flood warning program.

The District’s capital improvement program also continues on an active pace. All of our capital projects are shared on a 50/50 basis with local governments so with every dollar of District money spent there is at least one dollar of local funding going into the projects as well. The Board of Directors recently adopted the capital improvement program for the years 1999 through 2003. For the four years 2000 through 2003, the District has allocated $28.6 million to its capital program. The capital program still consists primarily of design and construction of projects but some capital funding has been allocated to floodplain preservation in the form of acquisition. Also the initial capitalization of the flood warning program is funded through the capital improvement program. Some 125 projects are identified in the CIP over the next four years.

The glue that keeps the major drainageway infrastructure together is maintenance. Without maintenance all of the District’s efforts as well as those of others would slowly deteriorate and become non-functional. The District’s maintenance program is unusual in that the District maintains drainageway facilities on behalf of other parties, primarily local governments, because the District owns very few facilities. Also, all of our maintenance activities are undertaken by contracting with the private sector. At the December, 1999 Board meeting, the Board approved a $5.5 million maintenance program for 2000. These expenditures are based on a work program consisting of 339 identified maintenance efforts comprising routine, restoration and rehabilitation projects. Routine work consists of mowing and trash debris removal that is needed on a continuing bases. Trash seems to find its way to the drainageways and without an effort to continually remove trash it is hard to imagine what these urban drainageways would look like. Our restoration projects include repairs to drainage facilities that are of a relative minor nature. Rehabilitation projects are larger scale projects that look like a capital project except they are done to repair an existing public facility.

The District’s fifth major program is the South Platte River. All the things we do for the other major drainageways including planning, design and construction, and maintenance are done on the South Platte River as well, but under the auspices of a single program. This allows us to focus our energies and efforts from stem to stern on the South Platte River and closely coordinate all the activities involving the South Platte River. In 1999 we completed the second phase of the Globeville project which is a large flood control and river restoration effort at the northern Denver boundary with Adams County. The cost of Phase 1 and Phase 2 efforts was $6 million. Funds are committed for the third and final stage of the Globeville project which is estimated to cost approximately $7 million. We are hopeful that construction on the third phase can be initiated in 2000, but there are still difficult problems to be resolved. It has been exciting to see all the positive developments, in terms of restoring the South Platte River as it flows through the Denver metropolitan area, and to be a part of that revitalization. In the words of Joe Shoemaker, the river has been returned to the people and it has become an important resource to the metropolitan community.

The District has several special projects in which it is involved each year. Of special note in 1999 is the completion of the revisions to Volume 3 of the Urban Storm Drainage Criteria Manual. Volume 3 identifies Best Management Practices that can be used by local governments and the local development community in the Denver region for improving stormwater quality. In addition to the traditional hard copy a version of the criteria manual is included on a CD as well. Another activity in the special project category is the District’s continued support of local governments in the nationwide pollution discharge elimination system (NPDES) permitting program. The District continues to support the three local governments with Phase 1 stormwater permits (Denver, Lakewood, and Aurora) and Arapahoe County that has applied for a Phase 1 stormwater permit.

Cooperating Technical Communities
The District in May of this year became the first Cooperating Technical Community with FEMA. Cooperating Technical Communities (CTC) are communities or regional or state agencies that have the interest and capabilities to partner with FEMA in their flood hazard mapping program. The thrust of the program is for us to work together to create and maintain accurate up-to-date flood hazard data for the thirty-two communities participating in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) which are served by the District. The initial agreement with FEMA sets forth the basic intent of the cooperative effort. Specific activities are to be defined by task agreements as the program moves forward. Thus far FEMA and the District have executed two task agreements. The first task agreement set forth the hydrologic and hydraulic data paramenters that the District would use to conduct flood studies and that FEMA would accept. A major issue that was resolved was the use of "future conditions hydrology." Because of the continuing growth of the Denver region it is important that land use decisions be based on future basin hydrology. FEMA on the other hand develops mapping for flood insurance purposes which must be based on existing hydrology. Task Agreement No. 1 sets forth the conditions under which future conditions hydrology can be used in flood insurance rate maps and when existing condition hydrology must be used.

Task Agreement No. 2 defined a project supported by a small grant from FEMA to utilize local government digital mapping products in lieu of the more traditional paper mapping product. The intent is to develop a system where local digital mapping can be used for developing Flood Insurance Rate Maps. The use of local digital products has the advantage of being more easily updated as changes occur and more accurately portraying local field conditions.

FEMA and the District are now negotiating Task Agreement No. 3, which would allow the District to evaluate requests for Letters of Map Change (LOMCs) which include Letters of Map Revision (LOMRs) and Conditional Letters of Map Revision (CLOMRs). If these discussions are successfully concluded, the District would in effect evaluate local LOMR and CLOMR requests for the 32 communities in the NFIP within the District, and make recommendations to FEMA. FEMA would still issue the letters because this is a statutory responsibility. The District would charge the same fees that FEMA now charges which would finance the District’s review of the submittals. The big advantage to the Denver area communities in the NFIP is that the technical evaluations would all be done in Colorado where the evaluator can meet with the applicant if needed and could visit the site as well. In addition the work would be done under the supervision of the District and could be coordinated more closely with the local governments involved, and with the District’s maintenance eligibility program since many of the projects are going through both the maintenance eligibility process and the letter of map change process. It is exciting to be working with FEMA on a truly partnership basis.

Federal Regulatory Initiatives
The federal regulators worked overtime in 1999 writing water related regulations to tighten the noose around the regulated community including local governments. In December, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published the NPDES stormwater regulations for control of Phase 2 communities. The Phase 2 regulations address stormwater discharges from small municipal separate stormwater systems and construction sites that disturb one to five acres. The stormwater discharge regulations apply to all communities located within "urbanized areas" as determined by the latest census by the Bureau of the Census. An urbanized area is any area with a population of 50,000 or more and having a population density of 1,000 people per square mile. An urbanized area can consist of one or more local governments. This regulation will affect most of the local governments in the metropolitan Denver area. The bottom line is that local governments will have to apply for a stormwater discharge permit by March 10, 2003. The District plans to continue to assist local governments in developing stormwater management programs to meet the requirements of the new regulations and in developing permit applications.

The Corps of Engineers in 1999 proposed new Section 404 Permit regulations to replace the Nationwide Permit 26. Nationwide Permit 26 allowed certain activities to take place in the nation’s waters if they were under defined acreage thresholds in terms of wetlands impacted. The Corps’ replacement permit program will instead permit specific activities and has lowered the acreage threshold requirements to the extent that many more individual permits will be required where once a nationwide permit would be applicable. The potential impact on District programs is significant because of the potential need to obtain many more individual permits than was required under Nationwide Permit 26.

The EPA is also proposing to revise the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Program. Basically, EPA is tightening the requirements for the development of TMDLs for impaired waters. Proposed regulations require that an implementation plan be developed as part of the TMDL process. Implementation in all likelihood will be largely directed at the regulated community that hold NPDES permits, such as municipal stormwater permittees. The purpose of a TMDL study is to identify the load reductions of a given pollutant required for the impaired water to meet standards, and to assign load reductions to the various dischargers. For those that have NPDES permits, you can rest assured the permits will be modified to reflect the load reduction that is identified in the TMDL study. Cost is a relatively minor consideration and dischargers will be expected to do whatever it takes. The cost implication on local government for TMDL programs could be significant. Yes, indeed, the noose is tightening. These regulatory initiatives portend a shift from local control of land use and public works activity to much more federal oversight and involvement.

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