In June 2023, several severe rainstorms swept through El Paso County, causing flooding that turned roads into rivers, caused catastrophic damage to infrastructure, and led to the Biden administration declaring a state of emergency.
At the El Paso County Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday, Public Works Director Kevin Mastin said another storm event was inevitable and the county needed to be prepared.
“It will happen again,” Mastin said. “We don’t know when. But we know it will happen.”
County commissioners agreed and voted unanimously to accept over $2.7 million in additional federal funds through the National Resource Conservation Service and authorized total expenditures of $3.9 million, with the $1.2 million difference to be made up from the county’s emergency reserve.
The funds will largely be used to upgrade damaged infrastructure in several areas of eastern El Paso County, including portions of Ellicott Highway, JD Johnson and Garrett Roads, the Duckwood area and Willow Springs Ponds, officials said.
The National Resource Conservation Service has provided watershed emergency protection funds that allow the county to make repairs not covered by other federal programs such as FEMA and the Federal Highway Administration, Mastin said.
“FEMA funding will allow us to repair our infrastructure and get it running again,” he said. “But it doesn’t address long-term needs.”
“For example, imagine you need a root canal. So you go to the dentist, who puts a little fluoride and a little Anbesol on the tooth and off you go. The pain is gone. But the underlying problem is still there, so the pain will come back if you don’t take care of it. That’s exactly what we do: we build our structures so that the pain doesn’t come back.”
To protect public infrastructure, some of the restructuring will take place on private property, county officials said.
“When these bridges were destroyed last year, citizens in the east had to take 15 to 20-mile detours just to get to their homes,” Mastin said.
“What if someone had a medical emergency and needed an ambulance? The ambulance would have had to drive an additional 30 miles round trip to pick the person up and take them to the hospital. That’s the kind of situation we want to protect against.”
District 2 Commissioner Carrie Geitner, whose district suffered “surprising and devastating” damage last year, expressed her support for the project.
“As our community continues to grow and these roads become more heavily used, we want to ensure that they remain in good condition and that we minimize the impact on residents in this area,” Geitner said.
Longinos Gonzalez, District 4 Commissioner, praised the commission’s efforts so far to build an emergency reserve fund.
“If we had to do this seven years ago, we would have had to cut $1.2 million elsewhere in the budget because we had zero dollars set aside for emergencies,” Gonzalez said. “The fact that we have these emergency funds and are using them properly allows us to address these issues without impacting our current budget.”
Mastin said the costs may seem high, but they will save on repair costs during the next storm.
“This funding will allow us to get ahead of that and actually save money in the future because we won’t have to deal with it again,” he said.
