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The Urban Drainage and Flood Control District was established by the Colorado legislature in 1969, for the purpose of assisting local governments in the Denver metropolitan area with multi-jurisdictonal drainage and flood control problems. The District covers an area of 1608 square miles and includes Denver, parts of the 6 surrounding counties, and all or parts of 32 incorporated cities and towns. There are about 1600 miles of "major drainageways" which are defined as draining at least 1000 acres. The population of the District is approximately 2.3 million people.
Governing Body
The District is an independent agency governed by a twenty-three member board of directors. The make-up of the board is unique, in that twenty-one members are locally elected officials (mayors, county commissioners, city council members) who are appointed to the board. These twenty-one members select two registered professional engineers to fill out the board.
Funding
District funds come from four different property tax mill levies. The mill levies are earmarked for specific programs that are detailed in the following sections. The total mill levy cannot exceed one mill.
Staff
The concept of the District is to keep the staff small and to utilize private consultants and contractors as much as possible. As a result the District operates a $22 million annual program with only 23 full time employees and 8 part-time college student interns.The staff is responsible for management of all project funds; supervision of all work done by consulting engineers; and coordination of all planning, design, construction and floodplain management efforts with local governments.
The District operates four programs:
- Master Planning
- Design, Construction and Maintenance
- Floodplain Management
- Information Services and Flood Warning
A brief description of each program is given in the following sections.
FLOODPLAIN MANAGEMENT
The Floodplain Management Program was established in 1974 to prevent new flood damage potential from being introduced into the 100-year floodplains while encouraging the utilization of non-structural methods of flood damage mitigation. The major activities of the program are:
- The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP),
- Floodplain regulation,
- Flood hazard area delineation,
- Development reviews,
- Maintenance eligibility,
- Master plan implementation and
- Public information.
The NFIP was established by the Federal government to make affordable flood insurance available to everyone while encouraging sound floodplain management. The District works with local governments to assure that they remain in the program and keep flood insurance available for their citizens.
The District also works with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency which administers the NFIP, to assure consistency between District studies and Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). Since mid-2001 the District has had a grant from FEMA to review requests for Letters of Map Change to the FIRMs at the local level. Also, the District has received several grants from FEMA to convert the FIRMs to Digital FIRMs.
The District has the authority to regulate floodplains but has chosen not to do so as long as the local governments implement their own regulations. The District assists the local governments with their floodplain regulations, including the requirements of the NFIP.
The District continues to identify and publish 100-year floodplains through its flood hazard area delineation program. The floodplains form the basis for floodplain regulation when development is proposed.
 DFIRM digital files allow local governments to add additional information such as aerial photos and color. |
DFIRM digital files allow local governments to add additional information such as aerial photos and color.
The District reviews and comments on proposed developments in or near floodplains at the request of local governments. This is where efforts are made to have developers follow or implement the appropriate portions of District master plans.
The District also requires that drainage and flood control facilities constructed by, or approved for construction by, local governments must be approved by the District in order for those facilities to be eligible for assistance from the District's Maintenance Program. The determination of maintenance eligibility rests with the Floodplain Management Program.
The District has a special notification program to notify occupants of floodplains of the flood potential they face. The District annually mails over 24,000 informational brochures to addresses in or adjacent to each District identified floodplain. Annual flood awareness press releases are also issued. The program staff consists of a program manager, a senior project engineer, a part-time project engineer and a part-time construction manager.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND FLOOD WARNING
This program was established in January 2005, in order to consolidate and enhance the District’s information services and flood warning capabilities. The flood warning program has served District local governments since 1979 and was previously an activity of the Floodplain Management Program.
The District assists local governments in developing flood warning plans and installing and maintaining automated flood detection networks. In addition, the District hires a private meteorological service to provide daily forecasts of flood potential and to notify District local governments when threatening conditions develop. The daily forecasts and real-time data from the flood detection networks are available from the District’s website.
A major activity is the development, operation and maintenance of the District’s Geographic Information System (GIS), which supports a variety of District activities including: Digital Flood Insurance Rate Map (DFIRM) productionand maintenance; tracking projects for maintenance eligibility; design and construction projects; routine and restorative maintenance projects; flood threat recognition and warning decision support; data sharing; regional mapping initiatives; and other applications.
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Another ongoing effort is to administer the District’s website and continually improve Internet access to electronic information available from the District and affiliated organizations. The District is well positioned to meet these growing demands with initiatives like developing an electronic library to enable consultants, local governments and the public to retrieve District documents, photographs and files.
The program staff consists of a manager, a GIS/IS administrator and an information systems technician.
DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE
In 2006, the Design and Construction, Maintenance, and South Platte River Programs were combined into the Design, Construction and Maintenance Program. This was done to better serve the local governments, which in the past had to work with two or three District project engineers for their design, construction and maintenance needs. Under the reorganization, there is only one contact person for each of the seven counties and for the South Platte River. The funding and budgeting authorizations remain the same.
The program staff consists of one program manager, one assistant manager, five project engineers, five construction managers and seven part-time student interns.
Capital Improvement
The design and construction of master-planned projects is carried out through the Five Year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). Prior to the initiation of the CIP in 1974, the District Board established policies that would distribute CIP funds in such a way that local governments could be confident that one portion of the District would not be subsidizing construction in another portion.
The key CIP policy decisions were as follows:
1) Proposed improvements must be requested by local governments
2) Proposed improvements must have been master planned
3) District funds must be matched by local governments
4) Local governments must agree to own completed facilities and must accept primary responsibility for their maintenance
5) District tax revenue received from each county will be spent for improvements benefiting that county over a period from 1974 to five years into the future
6) The District will not develop a public works department but will rely on the private sector and on existing local governments' public works departments.
The District's approach is intended to minimize the need for a large staff. Generally the District coordinates final designs prepared by consulting engineers. The local governments are involved in all aspects of the design process. The local governments generally acquire the necessary rights-of-way (ROW) and serve as construction contracting agency. The District is, however, sometimes the lead agency for ROW acquisition and construction contracting.
Each year the Board adopts a Five Year Capital Improvement Plan which lists projects and District participation by county from 1974 to five years into the future. This plan forms the basis for District participation in design and construction projects.
The CIP has been involved in over $432 million of construction projects, including $163.6 million in District funds.
South Platte River
The South Platte River Program was begun in 1987 and is funded by a separate 0.1 mill levy authorization. It was established in order to provide special attention to the South Platte River, which is the receiving body of water for all the other drainageways in the District. The District Board annually allocates construction project funds based on timing of projects, availability of matching funds, relative need and priority of proposed improvements, and compatibility with the South Platte River master plan. The District will share in the cost of capital improvement projects on the basis of a minimum contribution of 25% from the participating local government. In addition to capital improvement projects, maintenance is a primary activity. The District may contribute up to 100% of the cost of maintenance activities.
Other efforts include cooperative projects with property owners to stabilize river banks, acquisition of right-of-way, detailed inventories of facilities and properties along the river, periodic surveys of the river to track and assess horizontal and vertical movement of the river channel, and cooperation with local governments in floodplain preservation acquisitions and recreation projects.
Maintenance
Since 1981 the Maintenance Fund has been used to assist local governments in the Denver area with their drainageway maintenance activities. Through 2008 a total of $118.6 million of District funds has been spent on major drainageway maintenance. An additional $5.7 million has been contributed to floodplain acquisition.
Key operating policies for the use of Maintenance Funds include the following:
- To the extent funds are available, the District will assist local governments with maintenance and preservation of floodplains and floodways.
- Drainageways on which maintenance projects are constructed must be publicly owned or in a public easement.
- The expenditure of District maintenance funds is prioritized first toward District-owned facilities and District-funded projects, then to projects funded by others, and finally to unimproved urban and unimproved rural drainageways.
- Funds derived from the maintenance mill levy are allocated to each of the seven counties within the District on the basis of the tax revenues each county generates for the Maintenance Fund.
- Local governments are not required to match District maintenance funds, but may participate in order to accelerate completion of a large project.
- The District will not create a public works department. All design and construction work is contracted to the private sector.
An annual maintenance work program is developed for each county based on the funds available for that county and on a prioritized list of maintenance requests from each local government in that county. Maintenance work is divided into three types of activities: routine, restoration and rehabilitation. These activities are described in greater detail below.
Routine maintenance consists of mowing native vegetation, trash and debris cleanup, trash rack cleaning, and control of weeds and other noxious vegetation. Private contractors are hired each year to perform the routine maintenance activities on a unit price basis.
Restoration work is site specific construction work to repair of isolated drainageway problems. This work often eliminates the need for more costly work later on. Types of restoration activities include detention pond mucking, tree thinning, local erosion and bank protection repair, isolated structure repair, and local channel grading, stabilization and revegetation.
Rehabilitation projects are major design and construction efforts which are intended to rebuild and reestablish existing drainage facilities which have been damaged or neglected such that structural problems have developed. Examples include reconstructing or replacing drop structures; building low flow or trickle channels; establishing maintenance access into drainageways; and rebuilding or providing protection for existing channel improvements, box culverts, retaining walls, and other facilities.
MASTER PLANNING PROGRAM
The Master Planning Program is funded out of the original 0.1 mill authorization for the District. Key policy decisions which guide the program implementation are as follows:
- Each master planning effort must be requested by the local governments and must have a multi-jurisdictional dimension.
- Master plans are completed by consultants acceptable to all local project sponsors and the District.
- The District will pay up to 50% of the study costs, with the local sponsors sharing the remainder of the costs.
- The master plan must be acceptable to all the affected local governments.
The program has evolved into four major areas of interest:
- Master planning, including major drainageway and outfall systems planning.
- Drainage criteria manuals for local governments and the District.
- Support of local government stormwater NPDES discharge permitting efforts.
- Special projects, such as developing and maintaining criteria and technical information for stormwater quality and quantity best management practices, benefit-cost analysis, wetland issues, software development and other projects that contribute to the advancement of regional stormwater technology.
Master plans are an important tool to help identify projects for construction. The master plans also provide valuable input to the District's Five Year Capital Improvement Program. They also help guide new land development projects to be consistent with regional drainage needs, and help to identify and acquire rights-of-way for future capital improvements.
The program staff consists of a program manager, a senior project engineer, a project engineer and a student intern. Over one hundred forty major drainageway and outfall system master plans have been completed and eleven are in progress. These represent in excess of $2.4 billion in drainage infrastructure needs.
