Boxelder Authority considers boundary changes

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

At its upcoming meeting, the Boxelder Regional Stormwater Authority will consider changing its service area map to exclude some neighborhoods.

"We don't like to have people unhappy with what's being done, so we'll try to do something," said Henry Obermeyer, president of the authority.

The authority's next meeting, which is open to the public, is set for Feb. 11, 4 p.m., at the Leeper Center in Wellington.

Larimer County Commissioners attended the group's Jan. 11 meeting and urged them to look into the boundary matter.

The authority has been under pressure for months from a group of neighbors in what is called the "thumb" of the service area. Residents of Trotwood Ranches and Highland Acres argue that their land does not contribute runoff to the Boxelder Basin and therefore should not be included in the fee area.

Removing those two neighborhoods "could go a long way in resolving complaints from residents," Commissioner Steve Johnson commented.

However, he said, such a decision would need to be supported by hydrological studies of the area. "We want the policy to be fair and supported by the facts," Johnson stated.

Authority manager Rex Burns said the thumb area contributes only 1.3 percent of the project's overall revenue.

At the February meeting, the authority will hear reports and recommendations about the map change proposal from Burns, county engineer Mark Peterson and an attorney for the authority, Greg White. If the authority decides it wants to alter the service area map, the change will have to be approved by all three participating entities. Partners in the project are Wellington, Fort Collins and Larimer County.

Johnson said there are two boundary issues in question. In addition to the thumb area, there has been controversy about the northern boundary being set at County Road 70. The Boxelder Basin actually extends far north of that road, into southern Wyoming, and some have complained that properties north of CR 70 should be included in the service/fee area.

According to Burns, the fee area's northern boundary was set at CR 70 because properties north of the road are quite remote from the mitigated areas, so they wouldn't benefit as much as others from the flood control measures.

"In hindsight," said Peterson, "we should have included properties north of CR 70." About 150 Larimer County properties in the Boxelder drainage lie north of CR 70.

County residents in the thumb area maintain that runoff from their properties is contained in Windsor Reservoir 8 as well as some large irrigation ditches. Peterson explained that the Federal Emergency Management Agency assumes for its purposes that all reservoirs are full, as they could be at certain times, in which case floodwaters would overtop the reservoir. Johnson, however, argued that the authority does not have to use FEMA assumptions in its hydrology calculations.

At a work session earlier in January, the commissioners discussed granting credits to property owners within the fee area whose runoff is at least partially mitigated by storage facilities. If the map were changed to eliminate the thumb, they would no longer have to consider credits for those two neighborhoods. They might still consider credits for other areas, however, Johnson said.

If the authority decides not to pursue a map change, Johnson said, the county commissioners will set up a neighborhood meeting to discuss possible fee credits in the thumb.

Larimer County has not yet paid its share of the project for 2009, which is due sometime in 2010. According to Peterson, the county commissioners want to look at the boundary issues further before sending bills to property owners. Fees for rural residential properties have been set by the county between $62 and $97 per year, depending on the size of the property.

The authority is charged with building several facilities that will control flooding in the Boxelder Basin. Phase I of the project involves enlargement of Clark Reservoir northeast of Wellington, and construction of that phase could begin this year. FEMA is contributing $3 million of the estimated $4 million cost of Phase I, which will remove floodplain designation from more than 200 Wellington properties.

Phase II will be construction of a new Edson Reservoir southeast of Wellington, and the final phase will include channel improvements near Interstate 25, northeast of Fort Collins. Total cost of the project is estimated at $10.5 million, but Burns said that better estimates will be available by sometime this summer.