WELLINGTON, CO – The completion of the Coal Creek flood mitigation project with the support of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) pre-disaster mitigation grant has taken much of the town of Wellington out of the Larimer County 100-year floodplain.
Coal Creek and Indian Creek are tributaries to the Boxelder Creek watershed that runs through Wellington. This watershed was on the Top 10 list of flood-prone watersheds in Colorado. The state made it a high priority to mitigate the extensive threat from these waterways.
The Boxelder Creek Basin has a lengthy history of flooding and in 2008, the county applied for a pre-disaster mitigation grant from FEMA to defray the cost of a flood mitigation project. This flood hazard mitigation included diverting Coal Creek floodwater into Clark Reservoir, an existing irrigation storage basin. A design was prepared for excavation and dredging in and around Clark Reservoir to provide sufficient capacity for floodwaters from Coal Creek.
The County Road 7 Bridge over the Clark Reservoir inlet ditch was enlarged and reconstructed to allow the 100-year Coal Creek flood flow to be diverted into Clark Reservoir via the inlet ditch. This improvement mitigated the flooding potential from Coal Creek in the Wellington area by rerouting the flood waters before they ever reach Wellington. This mitigation by the state minimized damage in the town of Wellington during the September storms.