When Will Cherry Creek Flood?

Until the Cherry Creek and Chatfield Reservoirs were built, Cherry Creek and the South Platte Rivers, respectively seriously flooded about once every thirty years and often at the same time.

From my days as a journalist, I learned that the Cherry Creek dam was not built to the engineer ordered specifications. It has nonetheless held for decades, so it isn't too bad, but it would probably fail under conditions less extreme than those it was designed to withstand.

We get more extreme weather events now than anyone expected when it was built. We will probably have what until recently was considered at 500 year weather event at least every 50 years now.

The Cherry Creek basin is mostly designed to address this risk, with green spaces and parking garages along most of its extent.

But, there is one place along its edges, where the basin has steep constraining walls, and critical infrastructure is just a few feet above the narrow walled Cherry Creek bike path. That is the Denver Health Emergency Room, Denver proper's only Level One Trauma Center.

I worry about this risk now and then, and we really should build a flood wall to protect it now, before the Cherry Creek dam fails is a "freak not freak" weather event.