In Sunday's flooding, did Denver's stormwater drainage project at City Park Golf Course work as planned?
The roads near City Park Golf Course in Denver were supposedly reconstructed recently to be able to drain floodwater onto the golf course. That didn't quite happen when there was flash flooding in the city on Sunday night.
Drivers, businesses and neighbors all expected the golf course to take the brunt of the rain -- and parts of the golf course did flood as designed -- but there was also quite a bit of water flooding the streets in the neighborhood, including the very busy Colorado Boulevard. That has some people wondering if the storm water drainage project there actually works properly.
Bruce Uhernik, one of the engineering managers behind the project to improve the city's stormwater infrastructure, says he "thinks it worked really well." He says Sunday's storm dumped a lot of water in a short amount of time, but he believes the $40 million project did exactly what it was supposed to.
"I think it did, honestly, and I'm not just saying that. I judge it if the project's successful by how many people have property damage, have their basements flooded, have water get into their window wells. And we're not hearing a lot of that right off the bat," Uhernik said.
So even though stormwater flooded major roadways, Uhernik says they didn't reach unsafe levels.
Still, he admits there's more work to be done.
"We have this backbone trunkline system we've constructed, but there's still more to go..."
The engineer also said he believes this storm proved the infrastructure works because the street flooding was seemingly at or below 8 inches, which he says is a safe level.
