Fountain Creek itself will be cleaned up - though not with as austere an appearance as in the Colorado Springs Engineering's Springs Community Improvements Program (SCIP) project west and east of Gold Hill's section of the creek between Eighth and 21st street. Willard told the Westside Pioneer he wants to preserve as many trees as possible, much like Angler's Covey is doing with its new store being built next to Fountain Creek northeast of Highway 24 and 21st Street.
The LLC, a consortium of project investors, has received City Council approvals for a residential/commercial development on the 214-acre property, which housed the Golden Cycle gold-milling operation during the first half of the 20th century.
In-depth designs for the work is still being worked out by the LLC's engineers. However, as part of the LLC's agreement with the Colorado Health Department, Willard said the drainage work will include channels and retention ponds, thus eliminating the current situation where water with tailings washes down the rills - and other places on the property - and into the creek.
Contaminant and stormwater control “are the issues people are most concerned about,” he said.
The LLC worked with Colorado Springs on its recently completed drainage project in Fountain Creek, ensuring that dirt dredged up in the work was trucked back to the upper areas of the Gold Hill property.
Willard is not critical of the city's Fountain Creek project, which removed nearly all the trees and replanted new ones afterward. However, he wants to leave things closer to their present appearance on the Gold Hill section. “It's real pretty down there,” he said, adding that his goal is to “remove tailings from the flood plain without destroying trees and the riparian area.”
Like the city project, the Gold Hill work will address storm-drainage erosion by stabilizing the creek banks and installing intermittent “drop structures” - 1 to 2-foot rock waterfalls that slow the water's flow. “We have to have a place to catch rising water, so we'll be widening the channel and providing a place for the water to sit,” Willard said. “We also need to slow down the velocity; that's what drop structures do.”
The rills above the creek will be replaced with terraces to help ease the water down into the ponds, he said.
He hopes that all or at least most of this work can be completed in 2005. Eventually, “I want to see that as a nice park area,” he said.
However, an actual park along the creek, with trails and benches and other such niceties, will not be created until Gold Hill Mesa Township LLC develops houses and commercial buildings nearby, he said. That phase of the development is not anticipated for a few years. “We want to solve the functional problems from an environmental perspective without limiting our options to resolve future access issues,” Willard said.
Westside Pioneer article