John Scarffe, Nederland. Can the NedPeds project be fixed? If so, for how much, and does it need to be fixed? Nederland residents and the Nederland Board of Trustees discussed these questions during a regular meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, January 17, 2017 at the Nederland Community Center. Town Administrator Alisha Reis said the Board has been discussing some deficiencies in the NedPeds project, where some points of design had not worked as anticipated, so the project team brought some ideas for repairs and what costs might be.

Todd Ficken and Alex Knettel, project engineers with Boulder-based F&D International, which oversees the project, said you can see the original design of the project along Highway 72 today as well as the gravel parking areas on Second Street. The infiltration zone on Highway 72 is getting clogged, and you can see that’s occurring.

“What can we do?” Ficken asked. Options include paving it over by putting a hot mix asphalt down. It would undo the sustainability of the project, but they could create inlets that would allow water to enter the recharge zone, he said. The other option is to pave it with porous material, Ficken said, but we’re going to have to maintain it.

For the Second Street issue, barring the fact that it isn’t complete, using porous asphalt would work, Ficken said. For the problem of delineation between the path and street, Fiken suggested putting some delineator in there like a boulder, “and I think cars will hit them with their fenders.” He also suggested a fiber glass delineator. If it gets hit with a plow it just shears off.

Ficken said that if the Town goes with porous material, they would have to do it when we they put the cap down on Second Street. Right now, to pave over Highway 72 from Jefferson Street to the western terminus with hot asphalt, it would cost $25,000 to $30,000.

The cost for porous material, at the recommended four-inch depth, would be $20,000 to $25,000. For the Second Street, paving the gravel parking areas on the south side would cost $25,000 for porous and $30,000 for hot mix. The delineator effort would cost maybe $1,000, Ficken said.

During Public Comment, Paula Farrell, owner of The Art House at 171 Second Street, said she read through the recommendations and doesn’t think adequate information has been conveyed to the community about all the different surfaces.  Her customers don’t know where to park and can’t tell where the parking is.

They can’t use the trail or the parking spaces, Farrell said. Education should be done and some signage telling people where the parking is. That needs to be done first, and they need a time frame for anything they do. Last year, the work took four months.

“We really want to make sure there is a very definitive time frame when things are going to get started and when they are done,” Farrell said. On the east section of town it’s difficult to get up and down the street because of snow. Neighbors aren’t able to get into their own driveways, and she doesn’t want to have the tourist season ruined.

Nederland area resident Kayla Evans had one comment about this process, “I think the word sustainable needs to be redefined. It’s sustainable to have a sidewalk that Ray Rovey can use his wheel chair on. I think the design is not very correct. What is the purpose of this? It’s a sidewalk, and maybe paving it over is more sustainable. If you want people in this community to walk you have to give them a safe place to do it.”

Trustee Dallas Masters said the memo Ficken wrote to the Board is a summary. “I think we should go with permeable asphalt. What we have is sidewalks that don’t work, and I think we need to fix it.”

Masters said the Town doesn’t have a functioning sidewalk, road system or drainage system in NedPeds. “No one is using the sidewalk, so we don’t have a sidewalk.

Public Works is concerned if they plow it they will destroy it. We should go ahead and plow the sidewalks because that’s how they were designed. I’d like to see us pursue hot mix asphalt over the gravel area. Can you put hot mix right over the top of that and have drainage?” Ficken said that the gravel is a great sub base for a road.

Masters said he’d like to see the numbers for hot mix on all of Second Street and wants the drainage to go into the recharge there. Porous asphalt won’t be porous after five years. “I’m not a fan at all of the delineators. I don’t want to have them on the sidewalks. We’ve got the contractor still under contract so we need to get it done.”

Trustee Topher Donahue said he doesn’t see using hot mix as a realistic option due to concerns about flooding.

“Changing that street level is the best thing we could do,” Donahue said. “There’s nothing to handle water when the permeability is limited.” He suggested a reverse camber, putting a slight V in the road surface. “The idea of just paving over it would be a huge mistake.”

Mayor Pro-Tem Charles Wood said that last year’s board inherited a design and a grant possibility. “Our choice was to go ahead with that design and still get a CDOT grant. The Trustees funded it because it was a state-of-the-art experiment in sustainability.”

“What is our primary problem and how can we fix it?” Reis asked. “The thing that comes out is that the gravel parking areas seems to be the biggest malfunction. We really must figure out a way to stop this: ‘I want to do it this way,’ ‘No, this way.’ We spent lots of money on the design. This is the most over produced sidewalk I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Reis said the Town has talked about the idea of hot mix with infiltration windows. Ficken said that paving over Second Street, all of it, will take some engineering. “We’re going to have to look at some more traditional methods like curb and gutter. It will take some serious engineering.”

Miller said that CDOT will have to approve it as well. Reis suggested moving forward with some minor engineering and looking at costs, as well as talking to CDOT.

The Board gave a nod of four to start with the question to CDOT and a review of the Town’s finances for potential to cover costs from any changes. Ficken said he would put something together for the Board. Miller said she wants to hear from CDOT and the Board approved.

The Board met on Tuesday, February 7, 2017. The next meeting of the Nederland Board of Trustees will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 21, 2017, at the Nederland Community Center.