The Boulder County Commissioners conducted a community meeting about the use of mitigation funds from the Gross Dam expansion project on Monday, June 13, 2022, via Zoom. It was a meeting for residents who live in the vicinity of Gross Reservoir to focus on a plan to determine how to distribute the $5 million settlement fund from Denver Water to address the community impacts of Denver Water’s Gross Reservoir Expansion Project.

The meeting focused on the County’s plans on how to distribute the settlement fund from Denver Water to address the community impacts of Denver Water’s multi-year Gross Reservoir Expansion Project. The County designated Barb Halpin to manage this project, and she will be sure the community has the opportunity to provide comments.

Commissioner Claire Levy acknowledged that people are disappointed that this project is proceeding. The Colorado River system is distressed, she said, so they need to double down on water conservation.

Projects of this scale are obsolete, she went on, and they should be thinking about the future. We – the commissioners – want to hear from you – the public – to distribute the money. All $5 million will be disbursed, and consultants have been engaged to determine a fair and equitable use of the funds.

Commissioner Matt Jones acknowledged that this should have happened sooner. Why we are here doesn’t make any sense, he added. The settlement is not going to be enough for everything.

Katelynn Meszaros has been in the field for ten years. She has done a study about the noise and impact and created a rubric to equitably address distributing the funds. It will help lessen the impacts, she offered. It will address the noise and develop an ambient noise assessment and establish noise ordinances. It will identify air quality receptors. They had a site visit on June 3 to assess the visual impact.

Community members were concerned about better fire protection with limited ingress and egress from their communities. Bonnie Sundance from Nederland and previously a Magnolia Road resident said the bigger picture is the non-allocated funds. Sundance noted that there is an unpaid debt with the Ute Tribe that was broken. She has invited the Sacred Land Association and wants to determine the downstream impacts.

Residents said the noise has started to be a problem with waking up neighbors and suggested getting some level of air conditioning systems installed. They can’t keep their windows open. It is really disruptive.

Other complaints included the fact that there are huge lights at the administrative center; it is common to see trucks of all sizes; Flagstaff road is a mess at the intersection of Gross Dam and Flagstaff. The most serious: the whole area is at fire risk.

Commissioner Jones said he had heard about the light concern and has asked Denver Water to fix that. This is not going to be a large amount of money.

Katrina Harms said she lives on Lazy Z Road south of Nederland and close to roads that will be impacted. She is very worried about future years when the road turns into a logging road. It could be ten trucks in the morning and ten trucks out. She is not looking forward to the future of this project.

Other residents said they see the lights and hear the noise. The back-up beepers go off.

Jones said the commissioners want to hear from the residents and determine how a consultant might help. The project is going to go on for a while. It’s not a ton of money, he said, and we will do our best but we appreciate discussing the needs of the future.

Commissioner Levy said the entire amount, $12.5, million is part of that. We have just $5 million left and wanted to do this broader outreach. We have a lot of questions, so this is not the last meeting. Jones said the public is providing ideas, and that’s why you do public outreach.

“We heard from you tonight. We don’t have power over Denver Water and we can ask about the light and how it’s used, the fire prevention plan, and what do you do with the wood, and they will visit the site.

“This isn’t the place I wanted to be,” Jones said. “Here we are, and we plan to do whatever we can to help out.”

Barb Halpin said she will post a recording of the meeting at www.boco.org/GrossReservoir. She will be in the community and will communicate to all this summer.