Engineering Manager for the City of Fort Collins
and past president of the Boxelder Basin Regional
Stormwater Authority (BBRSA).
The East Side Stormwater Detention Facility, a
primary piece of a multi-phased series of projects
aimed at comprehensively managing stormwater in the
massive Boxelder Creek Basin, is a larger undertaking
than any one development company or city could’ve
tackled on its own. A number of parties – among them,
the City of Fort Collins, Larimer County, and the Town of
Wellington – banded together to develop a regional flood
mitigation master plan in the mid-2000s. Only this type
of alliance between government or quasi-governmental
agencies had the scope to find a workable, regional solution
to the Boxelder floodplain issues, said Chris Pletcher of
Ayres, who managed the project’s construction. The Town
of Timnath joined the BBRSA as a financial partner in 2014
to provide funding toward the remaining Authority projects.
Timnath will benefit by the elimination of a Boxelder Creek
overflow floodplain through its Growth Management Area.
“We’re not trying to do work that developers should be doing on
their own. We’re trying to do things that only the government
entities working together can accomplish in terms of these
major floodplain projects,” Pletcher said.
At the same time, the City of Fort Collins and the Town of
Timnath jointly designed and constructed several downstream
Boxelder Creek projects, including the Lake Canal Siphon,
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