For the first time in decades, Cortez officials are taking a close look at the city’s stormwater infrastructure.
City officials and engineers unveiled a draft of the new stormwater master plan earlier this month during an Oct. 7 meeting with the Planning and Zoning Commission. It is the first comprehensive review in 20 to 30 years of how city streets handle runoff from rain and snow.
“This whole report is really a good planning document – it’s good for budgeting, laying out where your priorities are,” said Ty Koppenhafer, the Cortez office manager for Jones & DeMille Engineering, the firm that prepared the plan.
Koppenhafer presented the plan to the commission alongside Interim Public Works Director Casey Simpson, who said the findings mark a necessary step toward improving drainage infrastructure long overdue for investment. The master plan is expected to go before the City Council later this year.
However, Simpson warned at the meeting, funding is a challenge. He said completing every stormwater improvement identified in the report would “completely exhaust” the city’s street improvement fund, underscoring the scale of the overhaul ahead. Simpson said the budgeting aspect of the plan is “certainly a significant concern.”
He said the plan will serve as a baseline for City Council discussions later this year and that staff is working to find gradual funding solutions.
The plan’s main goal is to compile a database of the existing stormwater infrastructure – all the city’s streets, gutters, underground pipes, culverts and inlets – and evaluate whether each component meets new land-use code criteria for hydrology and hydraulics. Koppenhafer said the city has two main watersheds, Hartman Canyon in the north and McElmo Creek to the south, a setup that benefits Cortez.
“There’s kind of a line through Montezuma Avenue where it splits the city in half, and everything drains away from the city,” Koppenhafer said. “You’re not seeing the huge drainage areas that a lot of other communities see.”
The master plan also analyzes deficiencies and ranks projects by priority. Some are major, some minor. The plan lists approximately 25 projects with estimated costs ranging from less than $10,000 for a small culvert replacement to more than $3 million for large storm drain installations.
Projects of high priority focus on areas within FEMA-designated flood corridors or where flooding could impact homes, roads or key infrastructure.
The plan identifies improvements along major corridors, such as Empire Street, Mildred Road, Main Street, Animas Street, as well as near commercial areas like Safeway, Walgreens, Walmart. Many projects involve replacing pipes or culverts and cleaning existing drainage channels.
“All these projects you see on the maps today have to be taken through final design, through coordination with landowners to get all the way to the construction process,” Koppenhafer said during the commission meeting.
Commissioners asked about project prioritization, historical upgrades, and funding concerns.
