Adriel Hills won't pay Boxelder project fees this year

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

At its April meeting, the Boxelder Regional Stormwater Authority agreed to add some Adriel Hills properties to its list of temporary fee waivers.

Sixty-five Adriel Hills properties, less than half of the subdivision, received bills this year from Larimer County for the Boxelder project. However, in response to complaints from some residents, the county agreed to further study the area to see if the properties are truly in the Boxelder Basin. The county will refund fees already paid by Adriel Hills residents within the next few weeks.

Larimer County, Fort Collins and Wellington created the Boxelder Authority to build stormwater improvements in the Boxelder Basin. The improvements will remove 100-year floodplain designation from more than 600 properties.

Since the initial boundary map was drawn, the authority has received complaints from many rural residents about their inclusion in the fee area. Upon further study of the basin's hydrology, the authority permanently excluded 43 properties from the fee area because they drain into other basins. Some of those properties are located in the Highland Acres subdivision.

The 43 properties would have contributed about $3,000 per year to the project, or just under 1 percent of total revenue from the county. There are 1,200 properties in unincorporated areas of the county that lie within the Boxelder fee area.

Another 240 properties, including those in Adriel Hills, have received a temporary moratorium on fees until the areas can be further studied. Most of the properties lie upstream of regional reservoirs, which provide some mitigation of stormwater flows.

The moratorium end date is Dec. 31. If the properties are determined to contribute runoff to the Boxelder Basin, owners will be billed beginning next year.

The first phase of the Boxelder project involves expansion of Clark Reservoir northeast of Wellington. Rex Burns, manager of the stormwater authority, said that work on the reservoir is expected to begin in late fall of this year.