Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Ralston Creek Improvements with Sam Rogers

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Sam Rogers, Civil Engineer with Arvada's stormwater and floodplain team, details how the City manages flood risks through infrastructure projects. Sam provides updates on the Ralston Creek Improvement Project near the West Woods Golf Course that stems from the 2013 floods.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's official podcast. We are really excited to have our guest, sam Rogers, on today. He has a background in civil engineering. He's a civil engineer and he got his degree from Colorado School of Mines and has worked for the city now for about three years as a project manager and an engineer for our stormwater and floodplain department, and prior to that he worked for a private firm doing the similar engineering for nearly 10 years. And really great conversation and, as always, I'm joined by my co-host, sean. Hi, sean.

Speaker 2:

Hi, katie. Yeah, we've been trying to get Sam on as a guest for a little while now, so I was glad we were able to make it happen. Obviously, he's super busy with all the work he has going on, but it was worth the wait. It was really interesting to hear from Sam the background behind the Ralston Creek project that we'll talk about and what was causing the need for that improvement project, and so it dates back to the 2013 flood, actually, which was something I did not know, and with that we'll get to the interview. Hi, sam, welcome to Inside Arvada. Thanks so much for joining us today. Let's begin by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the city. Yeah, thanks, sean.

Speaker 3:

Happy to be here. Yeah, my name is Sam. I'm a Colorado native. I was born and raised here and I've lived in Nevada for about five years now and just absolutely love it. And really what I do at the city is I work in our public works department as a civil engineer and, more specifically, I work with our stormwater and floodplain team and really just manage a lot of our our bigger CIP projects that we have and even design a few of them myself if they're if they're small enough and and easier to manage. But yeah, that's most of what I do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you, I was just going to mention CIP is our capital improvement projects, which are like big kind of expensive projects.

Speaker 3:

That's the gist of it.

Speaker 1:

And so we're going to talk about one in particular that's ongoing right now. But before we do, you mentioned, you get to go out on the field and often near our parks and trails system, because that's where our waterways tend to be as well, and that's kind of the work you do. And so one that was recently completed over at Lake Garber, and then the one we're going to talk about a little bit more here in a minute on the west side of town along Ralston Creek. But because of those locations I think sometimes it can be conflated with those looking like they're park improvement projects or trail improvement projects, but then that might be a piece of it at the end of the project, but that's really not the impetus. So can you tell us a little bit more about kind of what is a stormwater flood project?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely, I'm glad you brought that up and I want to touch on that more in a little bit here because, yeah, a lot of our projects do end up intersecting with a lot of different departments, a lot of overlapping goals, whether it's like with the parks or streets even, or other utilities. But yeah, typically with our specific stormwater or floodplain projects, really a lot of those stem from some sort of need, whether it's to stop erosion somewhere or improve a flood risk that's pretty high or if there's an area that's pretty prone to flooding. Those are usually the driving factors behind a lot of our projects and they could range from. We generally have a mixture of projects that are kind of in like an open river system through a park or something like that, and we even have projects that are just like closed conduit storm sewer pipes and they're underground and a lot of that takes care of a lot of the drainage that comes off of our roads and other hard surfaces and a lot of those you don't even really notice once everything's done. You don't even really know something's there, which is kind of a bummer. You know you like to kind of show off your projects, but they're just as equally as important those storm sewer projects, but obviously, yeah, with our creek restoration projects, those are usually the ones that are more visible in the public eye.

Speaker 3:

Like you said, katie, they generally do run through our parks. When you think about it, that actually probably is a good spot for a creek to run. It's in a more open space. There's nothing else really around it. There's ideally, no other homes or critical infrastructure. It's just a nice big park open space. There's nothing else really around it. There's ideally, no other homes or critical infrastructure. It's just kind of just a nice big park open space.

Speaker 3:

And you can equate that to, like you know, thinking about like a rural countryside, and you have say you have a river running out there. There's really no risk out there. There's no flood risk. I mean, if the creek were to erode or move around or meander more, change itself over time, that's really not a big deal, right? There's nothing around that would damage or cause harm to, and you know, if a big flood were to happen out there in the countryside, it's like, well, that's okay, it's just, you know, flooding like the overbanks is what we call it, or like the pieces outside of the channel. So it's a lot different though, when we're in a more urban setting, like here in the city, where, yeah, we do have we do have homes around some of our river systems or pieces of critical infrastructure, or trails or bridges, things like that. So that's that's why that's where we come in and, you know, try to help stabilize an area or just improve the flood carrying capacity of our river systems so that it doesn't have that risk.

Speaker 1:

And that had me thinking like two things that I'll just touch on quickly and then we can keep going. But the storm sewers or the closed storm water systems that are piping underground or under our roads are separate from our sewer system. First off, that's not true everywhere in the country, so some people may be more familiar with a different system, but often you'll see those no dumping signs, um, or like the little like icon with the fish on it or whatever, and so just for people's awareness that that water is going straight back into our streams and ponds and and so by you know, polluting that water system, it's not going to a sewer, a wastewater treatment plant, before it goes back into that system. So that's why it's really important to keep that clean and do things like pick up dog poop and litter and all of those things.

Speaker 3:

No, you're absolutely right, and that could be like a whole other topic just talking about stormwater quality and that sort of thing.

Speaker 3:

And we do have, you know, the other half of our team at the city does deal with that. Just, you know, stormwater compliance, making sure we're keeping our river systems and just storm drainage systems as clean as possible, and it's a requirement by the state too. We're actually under their program and it's administered through the state I think the state health department and we're required to do certain things to make sure that our storm water quality is up to standards and we're not polluting it and things like that. And it's not just you know us, obviously, anyone that lives in the city, any resident or homeowner, can do their part. You know it's no matter how small your, your property is, parts of it do drain eventually to a stream or a lake, and anything you can do to mitigate how much, how many pollutants you have getting there, whether it's fertilizer or, you know, dirt from your car or whatever, I mean it all, it all helps in the long run.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so one of the main reasons we wanted to have you on is you have a very highly visible project going on right now along the Ralston Creek Trail out there by the Westwoods Golf Course. It's known as the Ralston Creek Improvement Project, massive project. I didn't realize myself how big it was until I went out there and saw kind of the footprint of the construction that's going on. So share with us about the history, the need for that improvement project and what folks can expect when it's all said and done.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so this, actually this project, dates back to 2013. And for folks that were, you know, living in Colorado at that time, in fall of that year, I think it was September a large part of the front range just got hit with massive, massive rainstorm.

Speaker 3:

And it was a weird rainstorm too, because it wasn't like it was super intense, but it was just so persistent and it lasted for, I think, like three days straight, just constant rain and it just overwhelmed a lot of areas. And it just overwhelmed a lot of areas and I think, in particular, boulder, longmont, I think maybe Loveland probably got hit the hardest from that like the most damage. But there were still areas here around the Denver metro area that got hit pretty bad too, and in particular, here in Nevada, this area got hit the hardest on Ralston Creek, and it's kind of sometimes floodplain management, stormwater management can be tricky because, like youplains and know where that flood risk is, but you can only do so much with that and Mother Nature can be unpredictable, climate can be unpredictable. So I think the 2013 floods were bad, but in a way, they helped us understand where the problem areas were around the city and so, yeah, this particular area on Ralston Creek got hit really bad. I think there were a few other spots like along Little Dry Creek to the north and maybe some other spots along Ralston Creek that got hit pretty bad. So that was kind of the driving factor for the city at the time to want to do something here and fix what was going on, and really this is kind of an interesting project area because there's a lot going on around it.

Speaker 3:

You have the creek that's running through sort of the middle of the Westwoods Golf Course out there and it gets up to. Once it gets to the east side of the golf course it runs into well, not runs into, but you have this crossing that goes over the Croke Canal, and the Croke Canal is one of the major irrigation suppliers here in the city and also the greater metro region. But it's kind of interesting how it works because the creek actually goes over the canal. So they built kind of like this concrete channel that carries the water over the canal water and it's kind of a cool, it's a really cool design over the canal water and it's kind of a cool, it's a really cool design. But when you look at it you're thinking like Hmm, that you know that the the size of that compared to the rest of the size of the Creek and the floodplain is kind of small. Like that's probably a pinch point area, right, and you have. You know you have some other critical infrastructure around there too, like we have a um, a city owned pump station out there that helps pump raw water to all different parts of the city reservoirs, things like that and so that's like pretty close to the creek right there and definitely is something that we want to protect and not be impacted by flood flows. So, yeah, you go out there and look at it and you're like, oh well, obviously it's this crossing area that would have caused water to back up and flood everywhere, but actually what ended up happening is, just upstream of this crossing, there's a pedestrian bridge, and that pedestrian bridge actually has even less flood capacity than the crossing.

Speaker 3:

So what happened in 2013 is the whole area upstream of this bridge is heavily wooded, heavily forested. There's, unfortunately, a lot of, there were a lot of dying trees, there were a lot of fallen branches, trees coming into the river, and you can imagine just the amount of like debris and branches and things that got carried down by the flood and, sure enough, just got pushed right up against that bridge and that basically just acted like a dam, right, and it just sent so much water all over the place. It didn't even really make it to the actual concrete crossing that we were just talking about. A lot of it ended up, just going to the north and into the golf course, things like that. The canal itself runs north-south perpendicular to the creek and so a lot of that water was flowing to the north and piling up against the canal embankment. So the embankment itself kind of is perched up a bit and is higher than the surrounding land.

Speaker 3:

So again, like that canal was almost acting like another dam and so the water wasn't able to just flow downstream and get to where it needed to go and it was getting so bad over the course of those three days that officials had to come out, I think like crews from the canal company, from the city had to come out and actually intentionally breach that canal in certain spots so that water could just get through and stop just getting higher and higher on the on the upstream side. So that was definitely pretty scary, and at the time it was okay where it flooded to the east because there wasn't anything really there. It was more pretty scary and at the time it was okay where it flooded to the east because there wasn't anything really there, it was more open space, whereas now that area has been developed pretty heavily and so I think at the time the city knew that that was on the horizon, that that area was going to get developed and they definitely did not want this sort of situation to happen again, this huge flood. So that sort of kickstarted this whole project.

Speaker 3:

And luckily we have a wonderful project partner over at the Mile High Flood District. They're usually our main partner on these types of bigger stream projects and they're experts in this sort of field. So at the time the city officials got with folks over at the flood district they walked these certain areas, walked this Ralston Creek one, walked some of the ones at Little Dry Creek too that got hit and decided they figured out priorities of which ones they were going to fix. And this one was hard. The Ralston Creek one at first was like well, I mean, I think we know what we need to do, but this is going to be an expensive project and we need time to like design this funding, figure it out, figure out all the permitting and all that, so that one sort of that got put like high on the list. But they knew that they weren't going to be able to fix it right away.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't going to be like a quick win.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it was going to be a long term project, whereas some of the other ones, other areas that got hit, they were pretty easy to just like get in there and, you know, do some spot repairs on parts of the creek, but yeah, so a lot of history on that, a lot that kind of led up to this.

Speaker 3:

But it's cool too because, yeah, it stemmed as more of just like a flood protection, stream protection stabilization project.

Speaker 3:

But then as we got further through design we started realizing that there were, there were a lot of other overlapping goals with, like, the parks department and just how this system was functioning. They you know, our forester, I think at the time knew that yeah, this area was really nice with how forested it was and all the trees, but from a management standpoint it was kind of a it wasn't great. Wasn't great just because it was, so it was constricting the floodplain so much and the flood flows and you know there were trees that were starting to die off, branches falling. It was a, you know, a health and safety risk to to trail users. So that was a goal that had already been kind of established by the parks team to try to thin this area out and better manage it and put trees in better spots, so it just made sense to include that as part of this project too, and try to achieve that and I think it's on like the fourth hole of the Cottonwood course there at Westwoods is where we're talking about.

Speaker 2:

It's like on the right side there and that was some thick vegetation there. I know if you ever hit a ball over on that side, it's like forget it, You're never going to find it there. So it'll be like night and day difference from what it used to be, from what it's going to turn out to be. Where kind of is the project at now? Because I know recently there was a pretty big milestone of the bridge being installed. There's a trail closure right now. So where's the status of that project and when can we expect it maybe to be finished?

Speaker 3:

I know it's tough to nail down a specific timeline on things like this, but yeah, it can be pretty tough, but I would say we're we're more than halfway done now. And, yeah, our biggest miles, most recent milestone, was getting the new pedestrian bridge in place, and I didn't really touch on that yet either, but that's one of the biggest parts of this project is, we knew that that old pedestrian bridge was a pinch point and I think at the time it only had capacity for maybe like a two-year flood event, which is pretty small, and we can talk more about that later too. But like two-year is not ideal for our systems. We usually like to at least get at least like a 25-year flood carrying capacity. 100-year is maybe the ideal, but that's always maybe not as cost feasible for something like this. And we did run through a whole sort of alternatives analysis of like, well, how much, how much should we try to pass through here? And we did.

Speaker 3:

We tried to use some of the flow data from that 2013 flood as a good sort of benchmark and, interestingly enough, I mean that flood, I think, was only maybe like a 10 year flood. So it's kind of crazy like how catastrophic it was, but it still was. Maybe you know nowhere close to a 100-year flood that you would think. So it's kind of crazy the power of flood flows. But we did sort of use that as a benchmark and figured like, okay, well, let's at least pass that again. We want to make sure we can at least get the 10-year through. But we did a whole cost-benefit analysis on that and ended up at like a somewhere between like a 25-year and 50-year flood event to pass under the new bridge that we just put in. So that was the goal there and that was perfect too, because that ended up matching fairly well with how much capacity that downstream concrete channel has over the canal. So I think that just made the most sense from like a practicality and economic.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, and you mentioned, the trail is closed for the public now till probably at least June. Sometime in June hopefully they can get it reopened. Um, they started work in February, um, and so it's just a lot of heavy equipment through there. It's not safe for the traveling public to be that close to heavy equipment. The trail is pretty ripped up that sort of thing. So they have detours there.

Speaker 2:

It'll be worth the wait, though, because I've seen the renderings of what this project is going to look like when it's complete, and there's some really exciting features, amenities that will be included. It's not just to make it more resistant to flooding, I mean, this is going to be an amenity for folks using the trail in that area.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the goal with our projects too. We don't want to just like put something in there that'll you know it'll function and work well. We want it to also look nice too. So that's also, too, where we can intersect with, you know, with like parks and some of their goals and maybe, look, make the area look nice, and that also too.

Speaker 3:

I'm glad you brought that up, because one of those other features was going to be kind of like a soft trail pull-off area near the bridge and we figured that would help a lot too with just some of the traffic through there. You know, as it's getting busier. It's a it's a good spot for for like pedestrians to pull off from and maybe get out of the the craziness of some of the bike traffic and and also the way we oriented it and designed it is. It does provide access to the creek, to the river, so folks can actually kind of get more up close with it and and see it and actually see what we did there, which is great. You know we want to show off our work and and our design there, so I think that'll is great. You know we want to show off our work and our design there, so I think that'll be a pretty cool feature, and we'll see how it turns out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah it's kind of like a pretty natural. Still it's not going to look like a park or anything, but like just kind of resting area that someone could pull off. Even if you are like cycling through the area, you could stop and, you know, take a water break or whatever and have kind of a spot to enjoy the nature there definitely yeah yeah, that's always a goal too with our river restoration projects.

Speaker 3:

We want it to still look as natural as we can when we're all done. We don't want to just put, you know, like concrete in everywhere and have this straight channel, like you know they have out of, like the la river or something like. That's kind of a little bit of an eyesore. So trying to just make things just look as natural as you can but still function and provide erosion protection, provide flood mitigation, flood risk mitigation and things like that Very cool.

Speaker 2:

Looking forward to it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So June, july kind of time frame to get that hopefully close to done, probably some ongoing landscaping and things yeah, hopefully close to done Probably some ongoing landscaping and things yeah. So what other projects are on the horizon for floodplain and stormwater?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know, we always have ongoing smaller projects around the city, maybe like some local drainage issues that just need to be fixed, maybe like a storm pipe that needs to be replaced or a storm drain that's damaged, things like that.

Speaker 3:

So we always have those smaller ones going on. We actually have a few floodplain studies that we are trying to wrap up for some of our main river systems, so those are hopefully going to be wrapped up this year or next year. And those are important too, because those are basically like our master plans for our open drainage ways and our creeks and those help a lot in just informing us like what's you know, what's next on the horizon, what should we be putting our next priority and funding towards? And it also serves as like a catalyst to work with the Mile High Flood District too, because they also work with us on those master plans and determine, like, the next project area and if it makes sense to both parties, then we they participate and match our, match our funding. So it's almost like we get double bang for our buck on those capital improvement projects through there.

Speaker 1:

But I would say to yeah um, yeah, and then I know you have some of the detention ponds that like near the Arvada Center and some of those that maybe people will start to see. I'm not really sure what the plans are for those.

Speaker 3:

That's actually it is kind of a different way of thinking about, like flood mitigation, where instead of yeah, we do have a few projects on the horizon where we're looking at implementing more flood detention ponds around our creeks and I can touch more on that here in a little bit like a holding pond somewhere within the watershed to help hold these flood flows for a little bit and slowly release the water into the creek, as opposed to just, you know, if nothing, if a pond wasn't there, there would just be this huge slug of water hitting the river and causing more erosion and flooding and things like that. So we're trying to take this, you know, more holistic look at. Are there spots within these watersheds where we can put these detention ponds, which end up usually being a lot cheaper than a bigger like stream restoration capital project and provide a lot more benefit? And they're kind of cool too, because a lot of times we can, you know, install them in like a park or like the upcoming one we're looking at trying to do within that open space at the Arvada Center.

Speaker 3:

We put these in and most of the time they just they're dry and they function as just a dry pond and they're really just there to intercept big flows that come through in like a heavy storm. But for the most part, after all is said and done, ideally you don't even know that they're there. You could be just hanging out in a park and you wouldn't even know that. It's really just kind of this big holding pond which is kind of cool to think about, because then, yeah, that's where we do kind of let the artistic side of it. We explore that more and try to add these kind of cool features to the detention facility and sort of blend it in with the surrounding landscape so that you don't even really know it is an engineering feature.

Speaker 1:

Do you have any examples of that that exist now that maybe we could reference?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know one that sort of comes to mind. Actually there's two that come to mind. There's two that come to mind, I think, over at like Moon Gulch Park off 72nd, there west of Sims. I want to say I think that's actually a detention pond and that one you can kind of tell because it sort of dips down a little bit off the road there into the park. So I think that one acts as a facility and then also Homestead Park.

Speaker 2:

That was going to be the one I guessed. Yeah, you can tell it's like a bowl, it's like this giant field.

Speaker 3:

That's kind of a bowl, yeah, so yeah, there's, there are a few out there already, which is kind of cool, and you probably wouldn't even know it if you weren't even you didn't know, so yeah.

Speaker 3:

Then did um, I assume they do, but do they have like's? Like, where most of the engineering comes into play is like, how do you design these drains so that you're only releasing like a certain amount of water in a given storm event? And it's kind of crazy, like I, the engineering that goes into that is pretty complicated and even I still I mean I have like I don't know 13, 14 years of experience in the industry and even I still struggle with designing certain detention facilities here and there. There's a lot that goes into it, for sure.

Speaker 2:

Very interesting, yeah, very interesting. Before we move on to the lightning round, we like to wrap up our interviews with our guests and provide them the opportunity to clear up any misconceptions about the work that you and your team does. So now's your time, sam. Like what are some of the things that you hear a lot that's not necessarily correct or that you want to clear up?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know, there's a couple of things I would say with trees. It's always difficult with these, with with our projects. We always run into into trying to work around trees. And it makes sense, right, Cause it's, it's a waterway, they like to grow around it. It makes sense. And again you can go back to the analogy of like a rural versus urban system.

Speaker 3:

And if we were just in a rural countryside and there were a bunch of trees growing around the river, like that's fine, Like if one were to fall over or die or a branch were to fall, like you know, really no harm, no foul, it's not really affecting anything into these more residential urban settings, and you have infrastructure around it, like like the bridge or trails or you know anything, then then management of those trees starts to get a lot more complicated and it's always difficult to like we put a lot of, we always put a lot of thought in figuring out if we should remove certain trees or keep them or try to work around them.

Speaker 3:

And it's always like it always sounds like a good idea on paper to say like, yeah, we can just work around it.

Speaker 3:

But then, unfortunately, a lot of times you get in construction and you find out like oh wow, that that root system extends a lot further than we thought. You know, we can still work around it, but we may we may do more harm to it than good and it may not survive. So that's always. You know, we always put a ton of thought into trying to figure out which trees should we consider removing. Where should we replant new ones so they're in a better location? They still provide, like that, habitat and aesthetic benefit but aren't impeding flood flows in the creek or causing erosion concerns or other health concerns or safety concerns. So we always put a lot of thought into that and for this particular project we hired a landscape architect and an ecologist to help us look at that and understand where the bird habitat was and you know which trees we absolutely need to keep and which ones we're okay to remove or trim down or something like that, but then also helping with determining where to put new ones.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think there's so many factors to trees that are important to people. Like you just mentioned, the bird habitat and like just the natural habitat for the animals that live in that area can affect that, and so, as you just said, you think about that a lot and then for your average, like traveling public or neighbor, some of the creek projects are, you know, essentially people's backyards. They feel like they're getting shade from a tree and trees take a really long time to grow, so it can feel really hard. But the reality is trees die just like everything else eventually, and they can, particularly really big trees can. At some point they kind of have to go. But I know, you know Colorado, that sun can be intense and so people having that shade I know it can be really people really grieve trees when, when we have to remove them, and so that's very understandable but it's also just a reality of the work.

Speaker 3:

Sometimes I feel it I grieve too on some of my projects, like I'll fight tooth and nail for a certain tree sometimes, but then you know, you just you try so hard and you keep looking at it and you do what you can to avoid it, but sometimes it's just not possible, and I think the good way to look about it look at it, though is like okay, yeah, this is gonna this is going to be not be great for the short term, but, knowing just, long-term, in the future, it's going to just be so much better and function so much better. I think as long as you go into it with that mindset, then it helps ease the heartburn a little bit better. I mean, you're still going to be sad about it, but it definitely helps looking at it from that perspective.

Speaker 2:

And then one thing also I wanted to follow up on was like the two-year, ten-year flood sort of. Can you help understand that? Because we touched on it earlier but we never explained it. So what is a 50-year flood as opposed to a ten-year flood?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, those are terms that get thrown around a lot and it's a simpler way of thinking about it too. It's all kind of probability and statistics based, but really the kind of more engineering way to think about it is like it's like a percentage. So two-year flood, it's like you know, once every two years you may get a flood of that size that'll hit your creek. That's like a 50 chance flood on any given year. Or like a hundred year flood, that's a one out of every hundred years. So it's a one percent chance flood on any given year that it could happen.

Speaker 3:

But you know even then, like mother nature doesn't work, that way she's not just going to be like looking like oh, it's not a hundred years time to send a flood down there, all right, it's like, like. We're even like oh well.

Speaker 3:

I have a 4% chance of this happening. Like maybe I should make that Like even percentage-based. It just doesn't work that way. So I mean, yeah, our whole lifetime we may never see like a 100-year flood on Ralston Creek or ever. It's just, you know, it's always. We do our best to predict it with just like rainfall data, historical data, climate conditions, things like that, but in the end it's all. We're kind of all at the mercy of you know what Mother Nature wants to do, what the creek wants to do, and so you may never see something that big.

Speaker 2:

I was surprised to hear that that 2013 flood was only a 20-year flood, but maybe it was, you know, like a 100-year flood up in Lyons or something like that, and down here it was a 20-year flood.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think it definitely is more like spatial too, like they definitely got hit the hardest there with their rain and you know we have our reservoir too. So I think the reservoir, the Nevada Reservoir, did a great job of almost acting like a detention pond and helping to hold back those flows and not just sending a huge slug of water down.

Speaker 1:

Right, some of the flooding was like bigger rivers than, like I think, the Thompson in Loveland was the, because I had a flood day at CSU, like we got school off because of that flood Nice.

Speaker 3:

Which was wild.

Speaker 1:

I mean like yeah, you don't hear about that ever Flood day.

Speaker 3:

It was really what it was.

Speaker 1:

It was because, like, so many roads were closed and then, while we're on the flood piece, so the flood plain, arvada largely, is along the ralston creek, um ralston creek, and I was gonna say trail um, and we part of uh, our, the city's work is to keep a, um, something called a community rating system and we do like an annual progress report on that. And how that matters for our listeners is that if you live near a flood plane or everybody gets a discount on their flood insurance.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, right, yeah. That CRS program is administered through FEMA and so, as part of that program, if we do a, if we do a good job just managing flood risk around the city, implementing like flood warning programs or just like informational programs just to get people the information they need to know their flood risk, or, you know, even undertaking projects like this, where we're improving a system that gains us like points and credits under this, under this rating system, and the way it works too, is it's like it's like a ranking, so, um, the higher your rank, the more of a discount you get for your residents on their flood insurance if they want to purchase flood. If you're within a flood plain, I think you're required by FEMA and your mortgage company to purchase flood insurance. But, yeah, through the practices that we can do here through the city, we can get better and better discounts for folks just by managing that and we can link to some info for folks about that if they want some more info.

Speaker 1:

I know we just updated our progress report. So I just put that online. Well Sean.

Speaker 2:

All right.

Speaker 1:

Sean's doing the lightning round today. Okay, mixing it up, here we go.

Speaker 2:

Just a couple of quick questions to get to know you a little bit better. On a more personal level, question number one is what is your favorite thing about Arvada? It could be a place or a fact, or even a hidden gem.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, there's two. I would either say it's the parks. I think all the parks are awesome and there's just so many of them so close by and they all kind of have their unique. Some of them, I've noticed, have their own unique like theme or something like that. So that's really cool. Or just like, like you know, driving out west and just seeing the amazing mountain views, I think especially on like parts of 77, uh, 72nd, it's just the views are incredible. So I have to say those two.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely um. What was your first, last or best concert?

Speaker 3:

yeah, I think the last concert I went to was I think it was run the jewels and wu-tang clan at Fiddler's Green. That's really not even my style of music, but it was still super fun. I had a great time regardless.

Speaker 1:

Nice yeah.

Speaker 2:

And then, what brought you to work for the city of Arvada?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know, I grew up. I moved around a lot as a kid, lived in a lot of different towns around the metro area, lived in Arvada for a little bit and I think that was definitely my favorite time Again. I think we lived right next to a park and I just loved going there all the time and I think that was an easy choice now, kind of growing up, that I wanted to move back here, and I think I always had it in the back of my mind too that eventually I wanted to work for a municipality doing something. No-transcript.

Speaker 2:

Uh, what was your first job?

Speaker 3:

Oh man, like first job just working.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sometimes we put technicality if you get like a, you know the W2 job, or it could just be whatever, oh man.

Speaker 3:

My first job I ever had was I was a golf caddy actually, and I was at liquid country club and I was so bad at it. It was and I was at.

Speaker 1:

Liquid Country Club and I was so bad at it it was not my cup of tea.

Speaker 3:

It also kind of. It gave me a little bit of disdain for golf.

Speaker 2:

I think, too.

Speaker 3:

It maybe ruined my view of it, but that's just because you know.

Speaker 2:

It just wasn't my thing it was an interesting job, yeah. And then finally, do you have a favorite project that you've done with the city?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know it may not seem as glamorous, but I actually it was. It was my first project that I was able to design myself and manage and oversee construction. So it was basically from start to finish and it was just um, it was just like a smaller kind of local drainage project, just like a storm sewer that needed to be fixed up and, and yeah again, it wasn't anything glamorous. It was no Lake Arbor project or this project, but I think it was just the more personable aspect of it and this is something that I have a hand in fixing and I know there were some residents impacted by it. So it was great to interact with them and understand what they were going through and the problems they were facing with it and then help come to a solution and fix that and just see, see things turn around from there for them. So I'd say that yeah, very cool.

Speaker 2:

Well, thanks, sam, really appreciate you coming on and being our guest. I learned a ton about the work you and your team do, so appreciate it.

Speaker 3:

It was great. Thanks again, it's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Okay, before we let you go, as a reminder, we always love to hear from you, all our listeners, so please stay in touch with us. You can text us with the link at the top of the show notes or email us at podcast at Arvadaorg. Do you have any questions for Sam or any other episode ideas or things you'd like to hear more about? Please let us know. And some upcoming news and events.

Speaker 1:

The first bulky item drop-off event was here at the end of April and went really well. The next one is coming up Saturday June 7th, again from 9 am to 2 pm out at the North Area Athletic Complex or the NAC, and they are check-in IDs this year. Be sure to bring proof of residency through an ID or a utility bill, and you can learn more about the types of items that are accepted at arvadagov slash bulky items. And then just wanted to give a quick update because there are a lot of utility projects and construction, that is, city managed projects happening and so folks may have seen if you drive out on Indiana, there's been some work just south of Candelas Parkway, between Candelas Parkway and 86th Parkway. That's for a new water line installation and there's just a couple more months of construction there.

Speaker 1:

We've had some questions about that. And then two sewer line replacement repair and replacement projects are underway on the east side of town, and so one under Sheridan, between 68th and 76th Avenues, and then on Tennyson, from just north of I-76 to 64th Avenue is where that one's taking place, and those are both to increase capacity and just the resiliency of the aging sewer pipes there, and so I'll link to those projects if those are areas you travel through. All of those projects have, you know, really long construction timelines, like 9 to 12 months type of thing. So just some work and good to take an alternate route if you have one.

Speaker 2:

And then a busy time of year with events going on as we get into summer. The city is hosting its annual volunteer appreciation event coming up on Saturday May 31st. That'll be at Memorial Park. This year We'll have food trucks, custom gifts for our volunteers and some live music as well. Please RSVP. If you haven't already, and if you didn't get the invite, you can check with your volunteer coordinator and they can make sure you get that.

Speaker 2:

The Ralston Central Splash Pad and the Old Town Fountain will be open for the season coming up Memorial Day weekend, starting Saturday May 24th. Please keep in mind that the pavilion and the picnic tables there at Ralston Central Park cannot be reserved. They're first come, first serve, and so we ask that you please be courteous and limit your time there, as well as clean up once you're done so that whoever's next can enjoy that space as well. We do have 11 pavilions that you can reserve and we can link that in the show notes at arvadacogov slash park pavilions. The Lake Arbor Center and Golf Course Master Plan is hosting a second community open house on Thursday May 29th. That'll be at Pomona High School, this time from 6 to 8 pm. This meeting in particular will be dedicated specifically to discussion about the community center and pool. We'll have a separate meeting in the future to discuss the future of the golf course as we continue to evaluate stakeholder feedback. Please RSVP to that community open house to let us know that you're coming at arvadacogov slash lakearbormasterplan.

Speaker 2:

And then, finally, arvada Summerfest. The first ever Summerfest is coming quickly, on Saturday, june 7th. That's a new event this year, hosted by the Arvada Festivals Commission. You can enjoy live music, a pet swimsuit, parade and competition and lots of free family fun activities. To learn more, visit arvacogov slash summerfest or you can listen to our next episode where we'll have Adele Burton, our special events manager, on sharing about that new event. Thanks again to our guest today, sam Rogers. As I mentioned, adele's our guest next time. Today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services. Today's fun fact is that nearly 24,000 cubic yards of gunk and sediment was dredged out of Lake Arbor, which is just over 30,000 tons, and that's equivalent to roughly 6,000 African elephants Whoa.