Boulder’s Planning Board on Thursday night voted unanimously to recommend that the city continue on its long, fraught path toward flood protection on land owned by the University of Colorado. The go-ahead came after much disagreement among board members and carried some conditions.
Chief among them was that any eventual plan be designed for a 500-year flood, and that a citizen-proposed concept be analyzed more deeply during the next phase of the project, if it doesn’t result in delays to the already years-long process.
“Safety is the number one reason to do a flood safety project, and if you don’t actually do it, you don’t accomplish anything,” said board member Bryan Bowen. “We’re eight years on this now. It’s time for us to do something.”
The flood mitigation work is currently in the concept phase, from which a plan will be selected. A plethora of options is still circulating, but three have been chosen as preferred options by members of the public, Boulder’s open space and water advisory boards, and CU, the property owner.
Planning board’s role was to recommend if these plans (the three preferred and all others) meet the conditions of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, including the guiding principles developed specifically for the project. One of the principles is buy-in from CU, but there was intense disagreement among planning board members as to how much say the university should have on which plan gets selected.
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