Commissioners approve Gross Reservoir funding disbursement
Jun. 29—The Boulder County Commissioners voted Thursday to approve recommendations on how to distribute $5 million in funding to community members who were most affected by Denver Water's expansion of Gross Reservoir.
The recommendations were presented by the Gross Reservoir Mitigation Impact Fund Community Advisory Working Group.
"This is the best we can do in a bad situation," said Commissioner Claire Levy.
The working group, which consisted of a group of 12 residents in the Gross Reservoir community, recommended calculating air quality and noise impact rankings to the nearest tenth decimal place, using the weighting system of 30% air quality, 35% noise and 35% visual to calculate total impact ranking, applying the same weighting system across all communities in the impacted area rather than addressing specific geographies differently, and calculating the total impact ranking using decimals.
Barb Halpin, the fund's coordinator and Boulder County's special projects and community engagement coordinator, also presented her recommendations to the commissioners. Halpin suggested directing higher payments to households with significant impacts, group houses with lower rankings together, and award equal payment to homes in lower impact categories.
High-impact areas were determined to be Coal Creek Canyon (north facing), Gross Dam Road offshoots, Juniper Heights/Chute, Lakeshore/Northshore, Lichen/Tunnel 19, Miramonte and Upper Flagstaff.
The working group also recommended dedicating 80% of the fund ($4 million) for distribution to the impacted residences of Phase 1 and 20% ($1 million) for the impacted residences of Phase 2 of the project.
Halpin asked the board to adopt the community working group's reports along with all of the recommendations within the report, with the exception of the interest being returned to the fund. Additionally, Halpin made procedural recommendations of setting aside $50,000 into an escrow account for Phase 1 for any unexpected changes to status of addresses and to put unspent money towards Phase 2 funding; set the deadline for property owners to complete paperwork and claim Phase 1 money for April 30; and to authorize staff to finalize the list of eligible households.
Commissioner Marta Loachamin expressed her gratitude to the working group, as well as Halpin, by acknowledging that the topic has been "challenging" for everyone involved.
"A lot of you have done some painstaking work because getting to consensus can be complicated," Loachamin said. "I just want to acknowledge all of that work that you have given to Boulder County as an organization as volunteers on this committee. ... To me, it's another telling example of how Boulder County residents show up in times of disaster, in issues that are very challenging for us as residents in different parts of the county."
