Interview Transcription Interviewee: William “Bill” Schneider, District 2 Water Commissioner Interviewer: Naomi Gerakios Interview Location: Colorado Division of Water Resources, Division 1 Offices, Greeley, Colorado Date: July, 25, 2014 Transcribed by: Naomi Gerakios Abstract: In this interview, Bill Schneider discusses his job as District 2 Water Commissioner and recalls his efforts to warn friends, family, ditch companies, and government officials of the floodwaters flowing down the South Platte River in September 2013. He recounts conversations and expresses some frustrations experienced during the event because he and others in his office were not able to more fully assist in disaster management efforts. He also highlights the difficulties many ditch companies had when financing infrastructure repairs because many did not qualify for FEMA assistance. Finally, Schneider discusses water management changes that he believes could lessen the destructive effects of floods.

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Naomi: Today's date is July 25th. It is about 10:20 in the morning. My name is Naomi Gerakios, and I am interviewing William Schneider. Did I pronounce it correctly?

William: Yes.

NG: Awesome. Um and today we are at the Colorado Division of Water Resources in their Division 1 offices in Greeley. So thank you again for agreeing to participate.

WS: I'm more than happy to.

NG: And then you prefer Bill don't you?

WS: Yes, Bill.

NG: Okay no problem. Bill, would you mind stating real quick for the record your place and date of birth?

WS: Ah, Denver, Colorado. May 31st, 1967.

NG: Awesome, thank you so much. And your family background?

WS: Um, family farmed you know around the Greeley-Kersey area um, I don't know. Well ever since grandpa came over. He's one of the Russian Germans so.

NG: Oh, very cool.

WS: So, I mean we've been around here. It isn't very long, I guess its three generations now. But—

NG: Awesome. Thank you so much and then what's your educational background?

WS: Ah, I went to UNC1 um, and other than that a lot it’s just been go out, get a job, learn how to do something.

NG: Fair enough, what was your major at UNC?

WS: I was a history major.

NG: Woohoo. Awesome, and have you ever served in the military?

WS: Yes, I spent a good number of years in the army before I— That's how I then paid for school. So.

NG: Awesome, would you say any of the skills you learned in the army have come in handy?

WS: Ah, you know it’s, there's a lot of those. It’s not so much exactly what I did in the service but, dealin’ with people, being able to operate under stress, keep, keep your cool even when you really don't want to. Those, those were good less, and on the same lines of that. Nothing is as bad as some of the stuff. I mean, I was Airborne Infantry, so, I mean that doesn’t apply a whole lot. But, just some of those life lessons and how to maintain under stress and all that, I mean they're definitely valuable. So.

NG: Awesome, very cool. And then you mentioned you've had a lot kind of jobs and on-the site training. What are some previous jobs that you've had prior to coming here?

WS: Ah, well when I got out of school, I was in the service. When I got out of the service I was kind of a bum for a little while. I rodeoed, I you know I roped cows. Eventually it got to a point where it's like “Okay, it’s time; I gotta grow up a little bit.” You know, I was about 30 by then and it’s “Okay, it's time to go to school.” Um, while I was going to school, I worked a lot of other jobs. You know, I ran heavy equipment. I um, built some things that now I have to administer. And then I got a, you know, I mechanic’d for a while, um, and then I ended up getting a job for an irrigation company. Um, I was ditch superintendent for the Farmer's Independent. And at that point that's when ah, the current river commissioner stole me away and said, “You need to come be my deputy.” So, you know it was kind of one of those deals. But, then I was grateful that I had gone to school, so then I at least qualified for the job, and then it was shortly after that he got offered an even better job, and he ran away, and then I ended up becoming the lead. So.

1 University of Northern Colorado.

NG: Awesome, so a lot of on-to-job kind of specific training. What sorts of things might you have learned you know, in those sorts of earlier jobs prior to coming here?

WS: I mean, you know when I came to, ah, when I was a heavy equipment operator you really got a good understanding of when your excavating stuff out seein’, you know, you got an idea of how some of the hydraulics work under the ground. You start exposing groundwater, dealing with those kind of things. It let you understand that a little bit. When I was, when I was on the ditch, a big part of my deal is administering the river. I mean I'm chasing the diurnal constantly and that's the biggest problem I have in my district. And, you already understood the timing on everything on that even before you even rolled in. You knew how long it took the water to get from the Henderson gage to show up at this point and on down and the timing on that. So that— and you were dealing then with all the aug plans,2 you know, all that kind of part of it, you'd already learned that now you gotta administer. You had a good understanding of how all that worked before you even started on the other end of things. So...

NG: Awesome. What are aug. plans? I'm sorry.

WS: Augmentation plans, so um... well, if yah, everything is kind of interconnected. So groundwater is connected to the stream, um you know normally if something goes on the surface, soaks into the ground it gradually makes it way to the river. A well, if it sucks that water out its created a little hole in there––something that should have gotten back to the stream eventually. Um, you know you need to replace that. So then timin’s all figured out through modelin’ how long from this well to there. You know, if you pull 10 cfs3 out today, it doesn't mean sixty days from now there's a 10 cfs hole there. It might be, that depletion might be drug out, you know depending on how far away you are from the river, it might be years before that one days thing finally all time back. So, you’re having come up with other sources of fully consumable water to pay that depletion to the river back to protect the senior rights further downstream. So.

NG: Interesting, thank you. Um, what attracted you to this kind of work?

WS: Um... you know, as a ditch rider, you know runnin' waters— I mean it's challenging; it’s exciting ah on most days. It’s, you know, there's just so many pieces to it, it's a good challenging care— and the bottom line is, when you're a ditch rider is–– if you can get the farmer or the aug plan the water they needed or come up with ways to get them what they needed, I mean you’re helpin’ people. Yea we administer now but I look at it more as that's, I mean that's part of our job. It's right on in there–– We have to, you know,ah, maximize beneficial use. And coming up with ways to do that, to get the most bang for your buck is–– it's challenging but when you get that there, it's rewarding. You know, there's days that, yeah it's nothing but enforcement, and

2 augmentation plans 3 cubic feet per secon

those aren't the fun days. You know when you're having to be the bad guy going around and shuttin’ somebody off, you don't enjoy them, but you have a lot more days that you get to help people rather than havin’ to be the bad guy. So, I mean that's a big part of it.

NG: Awesome, um, and then really quick. Do you mind just stating your title and then what your major duties are on a typical day?

WS: Um, I'm District 2 Water Commissioner. Um, my area of responsibility, I mean my main area is Denver gage to Kersey. Um, but I do also handle the South Platte, the main stem of the South Platte through District 8 up through Strontia Reservoir on down. So, um, you know that's one of my duties. Daily I have to go through Denver's accounting. Chat–– ah, Centennial's, Englewood's, Aurora's, figure out what water they in priority for um, factor in any exchanges that are going on, all that. And then I figure out the release outta Chatfield Reservoir daily um, to then continue the water going on downstream. I mean that––

NG: Sounds complicated.

WS: That eats up part of my day. And I mean every mornin’, um you interviewed Brent first but by six in the morning, I've nee–– I've had to look at all the stream conditions, know the demand of all my users downstream, figure out who's in priority for what. If we're startin’ to get short on the river I have to figure out, what junior rights are gonna be curtailed and they have to shut out to get that water to the more senior user, so I have to figure my calls out by fairly early morning just ‘cause, I mean officially the calls are set for eight o'clock in the morning, but ditch riders and stuff, they’re out there at their head gates at six in the morning. You now, if you’re gonna make a change and tell ‘em they have to turn something off, I mean you need to let them know while they’re there not two, three hours after the fact. You know. And so we try and get that done. Ah, typical day, I don’t know if there is a typical day.

NG: [Laughs].

WS: But, I mean those are some of what happens every day. On that same line, you kind of lookin’ at also conditions further upstream. Tryin’ to do the best you can with your muddy, cracked crystal ball ah figurin’ out what it’s gonna be tomorrow and the day after that because some of these things you need to be lookin’ ahead. Um, you know if I'm gonna call out somethin' that's way up in District 23 for something I need clear down by Platteville, that's four days travel time in the river. I need to be kind of half lookin’ at conditions today, I might have to make that call change three to four days in advance. Same thing with Evan down in District One, you know something, if he calls a right out if its junior enough year, where I’m not sweeping the river somewhere in between and he's needin’ somethin’ clear down by Fort Morgan or Sterling, he needs to be thinkin’ five days in advance. So that waters there on the day he needs it. So, I mean that's ah, big part of your morning too. Just tryin’ to get that all figured out on what you’re gonna need. And then you’re halfway relying, but not totally relying on what the extended forecast is.

Well there might be a rain event, and if that happens that completely changes everything. So that's some of the stuff you look at daily.

Um, then after that any given day could be, some of my days are spent readin’ new water decrees that are getting ready to go to water court or substitute water supply plans, going through there tryin’ to see if I see any problems with it. You know, if I do I need to go talk to the engineers, which then they talk with the attorneys, and they, you know, that's a big. That eats up a lot of time. Um, anymore now, the oil and gas that's going on right now, that’s, uh, eats up a lot of our time too, with all of the oil and gas production. They need water. On that same lines, it has to be a fully consumable source; they just can't pull something out of the river or somebody's ditch. So trackin’, they have this amount of effluent or this amount of change water; it’s coming down. Then double checkin’ the delivery, makin’ sure nobody's takin' more than they should and that's a constant moving target. I mean those well sites change, you know every couple days and myself or my deputy spend a lot of time runnin’ out and pullin’ meter readings and verifying that kind of stuff. Um, you have your typical complains, um a lot of ‘em, “I see so and so takin’ water and I don’t think they should.” You know, investigatin’ that or “So and so is usin’ too much water.” And, I don't know, I don't know if I should say it or not, eighty percent of the time those complaints really narrow down to there's a feud going on between two neighbors and, and nine times out of ten, it really, nobody’s even really doing anything wrong. They're just tryin’ to jab at each other. Um, you have ah, when recharge is going, um, every site where somebody either diverts off or puts back something into the river we got out and check that at least one day, ah, ever week. I mean weekly, we got and ah and check all the–– And when recharge is runnin’ that adds up to a lot. You know, when all said you normally, you have 200 sites that your tryin’ to get to and then recharge fires up and now you got 400 that your tryin’ to fit into that week. It gets to be a busy week. Um, you know but you have to go out there–– You know everything they’re doin’, generally you don’t have to do anything. You go out and look and yeah the recorders readin’ right. It's matchin’ what the staff gage is sayin’, everything is good and you can drive to the next one, but you know it's like anything. The one time you say “All, I'll wait till next week.” You come back, and it’s like, dang I should have came here. Somethin’s off, somethin’s wrong.

You know on that same side, any site that we have that isn’t on telemetry where we can just get the data right into our office, well then we gotta download it while we’re there too, and that eats up a little bit of time. I mean some of those, its ah–– every site it’s a fifteen minute download, and when you got a lot of those, there's a lot of kind of that twiddlin’ your thumbs going “Come on, go faster. ‘Cause I got a hundred more I need to get to today.” Um, and then once you got all that data, then every week you need to get that data, put it into workbooks, post it on the FTP4 site because somebody—

NG: What's FTP?

4 File Transfer Protocol

WS: It's just a website where we can just, ah, all our workbooks, everything else, all our numbers you know, it’s mostly just Excel spreadsheets, but it’s a place where everybody can grab their data. Cause some of these workbooks are so big you can’t even email ‘em. You need a website, where somebody can come in and grab the piece they need from. We’re doing that weekly.

Um, you know there's always some other measurements, you know if there's somethin’ questionable, you know either myself or my deputy needs to go out, get in there measure the flows. Verify the structures readin’ right and all our structures we try to do at least one measurement every year, just to verify that “Okay, it’s we’ve gone through the winter,” sometimes because of frost and what have you structures shift, or we need to make sure it’s still true. You know, 99 percent of them you go out, do one measurement yeah it still matches dead on the rating table, we’re good. Then you have the one that it doesn’t. And then it’s like “Okay, why doesn't it?” And then it’s, then it’s on one of those deals that then we call our hydro’s.

You know, James and I we, we do measurements pretty regularly but it isn’t what we do every day. So if you get one that its one of those and now you're gonna tell somebody “Well, I know your rating table says your runnin’ ten foot but I say you’re runnin’ 15, you need to turn down.” That's gonna be a little, people are gonna be a little upset over that. So, I don’t want it based off my measurement. You get somebody who that’s all they do every day of the week, is they go out and measure. You know, and they’ll come out and verify it, and then half the time they’re a little grumpy that it’s like “Well, our measurement matches yours; could have gone with that.” You know, but anytime it might turn into a legal battle it’s better to cover your bases.

[Laughing in the background].

WS: Um, so we do a lot of measurements. And then there's also the–– I mean we got a list of water rights that for whatever reason, for fifty years nobody’s administered. I mean most of them are little tiny things, and that’s one thing we’ve been tasked with too, but within the next, well we got what six years left? This list of water rights, we have to have checked every one of those off, and if it still exists and it’s running water then we need to start administering it. You know? Um, if it's not, you know, if it’s not running is there a reason why they’re not running? Do they just not need it? Or a lot of these, you go out there and it’s something that should have been on an abandonment list years ago. You go to the site and there’s a parking lot there. You know, it’s like, “Okay, that’s a simple one. We’ll get this on the next abandonment list.” It just goes away and we don't have to worry about it.

I mean so that eats into time and there's a lot ah, you know anytime you got some spare time yah, I try and upkeep on my diversion records. You know, by statue by every year I got do a record on everything everybody ran. Um, that eats a huge amount of my time up in the winter cause that's–– You try and stay up on ‘em during the year. This year’s been better than most cause it’s been a really good year. Um, so I’ve had a little more time. I can stay current on it. Ah, but on most years, yeah you say you’re gonna work on ‘em and then its November 1st. You started a

new water year, and it's like “Okay, I've got three months to get these done.” And you’re in here seven days a week, fourteen hours a day. By the time its over you swear your blind because stared at Excel for so long. Um’ so that eats up a lot of your time. And we're working on some tools to try and make that process go a little better and faster that–– Um, you know, there's, I don't know, there's somethin’ different every day. I mean you have your set standards, but there's always something goin’ on. You know, on a normal year, this time of year I eat a lot of time up just administering the water. Um, we get a diurnal that comes through section two caused by Metro Sewer. So I have daily, about a 200 foot swing–– 200 cfs swing in my river every day. That's caused by, you know, I mean the way Metro Sewer's kind of set up, there's no holding facilities. As effluent comes in, they process it, clean it, and it comes out. Well, when everybody's sleeping, normally at night people aren’t all up flushing toilets, takin’' showers, washin’ dishes, washin’ clothes. There's a 200 foot swing in that. You know, in the morning when everybody gets up and getting’ ready to go to work, well all of a sudden the flows come up. Um, when I got a bypass call, I have to chase that water all the way down my river. Typical, this time of year we normally have a 1871 Evan’s No. 2 bypass to the Western Ditch. And as that diurnal moves down the river when — if you look at the graphs, you know right down there, it’s a pretty steep up and down, but every bypass–– every diversion structure it goes by, every dam, it spreads that out so that the peaks come a little lower and the valleys raise up a little bit. But, by the time it gets down to, oh about Platteville, it’s you know now instead of a three hour dip it’s an eight hour dip. That you know, it’s about, the low is about 60 cfs. But, still during that time that ditch needs to turn down as its droppin’ off by their head gate. They have to reduce their diversion to keep the senior right whole during that whole time and then as it comes up they can pick that back up. I mean that’s a lot of time is saying, “Okay, I have this much here, you need to turn down to that.” Through the middle of the night it does get a little flaky cause it’s kind of one of those deals, by ten o'clock I say, “I gotta sleep at some time. Okay, were gonna take our best guess at what it's gonna do right now.” And then you know, at five in the mornin’ I can give them a holler and have ‘em do something different. But, like I said this year’s been a really good year. I haven't had to mess with any of that yet this year, um, if we don't get these rains they're sayin’ might come, I'll be doin’–– It’ll finally happen by this weekend. I'll have to start doing that. But, you know it's been a good year. I mean there’s, there,s, I mean like I said, you have your set. This is what you do every day, but in between there, there could be a ton of different things. So.

NG: Absolutely. Um, let see. Are there any major projects you've worked on or completed in your professional career?

WS: Oh... I don't know about major proj–– Everything seems. Every year just getting diversion records done seems like a major project.

NG: [Laughs].

WS: You know, I have some four thousand lines of records. You know that are all daily “This is what this did.” Every day of it and I gotta sign ‘em, so I mean my name’s on it that they gotta be right. So every year that seems like a major, major project right there.

NG: Fair enough. Um, let's see you kind of went over major issues that consume the major of your time. Um, let's see. We can move into the flood, I think you covered a lot of those. How did you become aware of the severity and magnitude of the flood?

WS: Um, you were seein’ the reports on that first days that the rains started happenin’. And you were kind of watching stuff a little bit, but I mean... and then pretty rapidly you knew that next mornin’ that this was gonna be a major event. You know, um, at that point in time on that first morning, you weren't thinkin’ it was gonna be that bad but you knew it was gonna be, it was kind of one of those that I was already warning a couple of my ditches that sit in lower ground, “You need to start payin’ attention a little bit. You know, in a couple we’re gonna have some pretty big water down here.” Then, then it wasn't–– It was that afternoon that then I really got a better idea on it. I had a little tributary, creek called Little Dry Creek that that thing normally runs at what you’d consider before a major rain event, you know it was maybe what you thought was roarin’ was oh, fifteen foot wide and maybe ten foot deep. That’s a pretty deep stream bed through that area. That afternoon from after those rains they got up by Fredrick and Firestone, I have no idea how deep it was but it was a quarter-mile wide.

NG: Phew. So it grew?

WS: I mean it was huge. It was, and it blew out one of my other ditches just ‘cause Lupton Bottom's ditch normally, the creek runs underneath it. The ditch is bridged over the top of the creek and the creek is normally about fifteen feet below it. The creek was above that and just fillin’ the ditch up and then as it went down it just blew out the whole banks of the ditch. I was like "this is gonna be a big problem."

And you were startin’ to see some other water. You know Clear Creek was pickin’ up, you know some of that stuff startin’ to come and I then started warning, some of my other ditch companies. It was kind of one of those, “You really need to watch this one.” You know a lot of them I advised if they could:

“If you can get your diversion dams out now before it get there. Get 'em out.”

“If your running water, shut your––– you might think about shuttin’ things down.”

Um, and then later that afternoon things really started comin’ and I was tellin’ people “Shut your ditch off.”

Um, you know some of ‘em listened, some of ‘em, you know, we’d been through a lot of bad years. We’ve been through a few years of drought, so for aug plans, recharge ponds, nobody run

any water in a couple years. Now we’re at free river because we’d already said, “We got way too much water.”

So they, a lot of these guys are thinking, “We can run water.”

And, I started tellin ‘em, “You need to shut off because you’re gonna have a full ditch whether you want it or not. It’s gonna over top your banks. So if you already got 300 cfs in there to begin with and then it overtops, you're gonna really do some damage on your ditch. Whereas, if you shut off, let–– you know, whatever it overtops, it runs down your ditch, there's a good chance maybe your ditch is still there when it’s done. And then as soon as it drops down a little bit, then your set up to pick and run for some while.”

Um, some guys listened; some guys didn’t. The ones that didn’t, you know, are, they had a lot more damages they had to take care of. Um, some of them when you advised that they even got more proactive. They had a spot on their ditch that they just went and camped out a track hoe there, and if it really did overtop their ditch, they were in place that they just intentionally breached the side of it, to just send that water, get it back out of there before it did damage down through their whole entire system.

Um, then about a little later that day, then you really knew you had the problem. I mean, at this point in time we already had close to 10,000 foot was showing at the Henderson gage. Um, Derby gage was runnin’, I can't remember off the top of my head, off Clear Creek, I wanna say a few thousand runnin’ off of there. [Coughs]. And I was lookin’ at that. I knew one of our hydro's was at Henderson doin’, doin’ a bridge measurements off of there and I was glanicin’ up my other gages, and I looked at Sand Creek. And Sand Creek, it comes from the east through Aurora and all that and normally at that time of year, typical flows and in that and up until then, the day before there was 7 cfs showin’ at Sand Creek. When I gazed at that gage, I mean that's one of ‘em that I normally, eh, sometimes I look at but I mean, 7 cfs of water is not something you really look at. I glanced at it and it was showing 4,000. And I called Patrick, he’s the hydro that was down there at Henderson. I was like...

NG: What's his last name?

WS: Tyler. And um, he ah, his next stop was he was gonna go check, measure the Derby gage. I was like “On your way to Derby,” ‘cause the Sand Creek gage is a GS gage so it isn't one of ours, but I was just like “On your way there, drive by and verify for me is that real water or not.” Cause my thoughts were, as much as we had in the South Platte I was kind of half thinking it was backing up into Sand Creek, and it was a false reading. That you know, it was really the South Platte flows backed into there that it was.

And about a half hour later I got a call back of “That's real water, and you need to get a hold of Sun Corps.” Cause Sand Creek runs right by the refinery and it was, it was just eatin’ out the banks and creepin’ its way into all the storage tanks at the refinery, so. then Sun Corps then they

started scramblin’. They were transferring product from those tanks to move them to another, so, you know if it did finally eat enough into the bank that something happenin’ with those it would, ah, then we didn't have this giant environmental disaster going on top of it.

And then it was, you’re tellin’ everybody “You need to get something done. This is gonna be at least '735 flood magnitude kind of stuff.” Um, I don't know. I should, part of me wonders if I should say anything or not. I was

NG: Do you want me to pause it?

WS: Yeah, maybe for a second.

NG: Okay.

[30:16 Recording Paused].

[30:19 Recording Resumed].

NG: Okay.

WS: Um, you started getting some frustrations that day when tryin’ to talk to other agencies, cities and county. To try and get some warning out that this is comin’. And nobody really wanted to listen to you too much. So, I mean, you started doing–– Everybody you knew, you were calling and say “This is comin’. You need to get this out.” And I mean, it was one of those deals of, I mean even, ah some businesses, you know bein’ that they listened, it saved their business. They were able to get all their stuff moved outta there, and I mean this was on Thursday.

Come Friday all of sudden then at about noon, and by then it’s almost too late, cities and counties started telling people to evacuate. Well the, the waters 20 minutes away from being there then. You know and I had, it's kind of that hindsight you kicked yourself too, you had friends that you didn't think about callin’, and you know, some of them barely got out there. I, I mean they ended up lea-losin’ all their stuff and it was just, they barely got their bodies and their pets out of the place. You know water was coming up as they were tryin’ to leave . And it's like “Oh, I wish I had thought about calling you.” You know? But it was one of those ones that they weren't right on the river, they're, you know, your head still wasn’t thinking, “Well they're in the floodplain.” But, you know in your head “Ah, they're a half mile off,” kind of thing. Even though at that point in time, you knew it was gonna be... at least that bad. You know, you beat yourself up about that a little bit. Part of me, you regret that you didn't go and just go to the office of Emergency Management and just force feed yourself down their throats and say, “You gotta pay attention.”

5 1973.

You know, um, I mean I will say moving forward since then, there's a pretty good contact now between us and them. And we've had some more minor things happen that when you tell ‘em something, they listen. You're involved a lot more in the emergency management thing. So, it’s a shame, you had to have everything completely fall apart to get to that phase but I mean movin’ forward, if we ever have one of those events again, the response, I think will be a lot better. You know, and it's one of those deals of, you know there was some frustration then on that Friday, when things were really bad comin’ through the, the Evans and La Salle area. They were spewing out some information that was, bad.

NG: Who was?

WS: Ah, county.

NG: Okay.

WS: Um, they, they thought they knew how some things interacted that were completely wrong and so they were getting’ other people in panic mode. Um, you know, Latham Ditch when they're ditch overtopped they sent out this big thing, there was this alert that now the Latham Reservoir is gonna overtop and breach and its failing already and evacuate the city of Kersey and–– And it was one of those that as soon as I heard it on the radio, I was grabbin’ the phone going, “You guys are nuts.” You know?

It was–– you know and getting everybody, tellin' everyone, you know–– you ran to Kersey and told everybody “Tell everybody to stay where they are. You’re fine. Yes, the Latham Ditch overtopped. Latham Ditch does not even fill Latham Reservoir, um you’re fine.” You know?

“Well is the ditch gonna––” ‘cause the ditch runs right through Kersey and they're like, "well is the ditch gonna flood us out?" I was like “No, it's gonna be really full but the ditch is gonna blow out in one of two spots.” I mean, you know, some low spots that are kind of problem areas. I was like, “It’s gonna blow out either right by, you know, just on the other side of the river, east of Evans, or it’s gonna blow out about County Road 45. Right in there, one of those two spots is, it's just gonna not be able to handle water and the whole ditch bank is gonna go out.” And it did. It failed right there by Evans, and you know, it was fine. I mean yeah the ditch was full to the gills for a few hours runnin’ by there. But it wasn’t overtoppin’, it wasn’t washin’ out anybody’s homes.

And the bigger part of it was, you know you got that shut down but all these people were panickin’, thinkin’, “Oh we gotta get out of here.”

And that's what I told the people there in Kersey, it's like “Shut ‘em down and keep ‘em down because the bigger problem is your gonna get people out drivin’ and we aren’t gonna have a bridge left over the river in a few hours.” And if you’ve got people, now they can’t get home or, or they might be in a bad spot or tyrin’–– you saw a lot of that. People ignorin’ things and tryin’

to drive where they shouldn’t have been. Um, but I mean it was such a huge area that your tryin’ to scramble everything and shut everything down. Um, you know, you get amazed at–– I don't know I probably shouldn't say this either.

NG: I can pause it again?

WS: But, you know. It's just ah–– but it's the truth. People's desire to want to see a train wreck, overrides their intelligence. "Oh this is terrible, we want to go––" and they don't understand ... that their riskin’ their own life to go want lookey-loo at that. That was–– just that whole thing on the Latham Reservior. When they put that announcement out there that was one of the things, I did just, you never knew maybe some freak thing was happenin’ that you didn't know about and the Latham was really in trouble. I mean maybe there was some freak rain cell that happened on the BB Draw and now–– you know, so you had to go out and verify that yes, the dam is fine. And to get out to the dam, it took me forever to get through to actually do it because of all the people parked on the county road below the dam wanting to see if it’s failing. And I was like, “If it really fails, you're gonna drown!”

NG: Mm-hmm.

WS: You know? It's...

NG: It defies common sense.

WS: Yeah, it's like, “Ah! You're the reason there's safety labels on everything!” Oh, I better not get on that. But, I mean it was, it was hectic and chaotic. You know? Just tryin’ to, you were still tryin’–– and like I said the gages are blowin’ out, you’re tryin’ to figure out when peaks are comin’ through so you can kind of let the people further downstream get a good idea, “This probably how much is probably comin’ at yah.” You know, timin’ on things, well if the peak hit here, I think we're finally droppin’ off. It could give an idea of how long the peak might last further downstream and things too.

And it was, it was kind of just one of those perfect scenarios. That it, it shouldn't have all came together like it did but the timing on all those storms was perfect. So on all the trib’s the peak off every one of those trib’s would hit the river the same time the peak in the river itself was right at it. So it just kept escalating it, rather than maybe high waters drawn out. You know? A peak that came through from Henderson and Sand Creek hit the St. Vrain, just as the peak from it was comin’ in and stacked in. And the peak from the Thompson was right about same time–– I mean, down at that part of the river the Thompson and St. Vrain were one river for awhile. I mean that whole thing was just, I mean it was just, it was amazing. Just how all that happened.

But, I mean people got, you know, people were workin’ really hard to try and do everything they can to ah, you know save what they could. So, like I said, you know, movin’ forward, you know in the future if I ever had that kind of resistance I'd know now that you know, you just need to go

force feed yourself down somebody's throat. Cause that’s a bad thing. There was a lot things torn up and destroyed that shouldn't have been. You know? If we would have gotten a hold of the right people and gotten the word out there, you know. You saw it comin’ a couple days before it actually hit down through here. You know, the stuff further up the trib’s up in Lyons–– I mean there’s no warning for that. The storm hit in the middle of the night and the flood was there. You know, but further down the Evans, La Salle’s, you know that kind of area. I mean there was a few days warning that this was comin’. So, um, I don't know.

NG: Interesting. Um, you know you voiced your frustrations at not being directly involved. What were some of things that you did do during the event to try and respond to the flood?

WS: I mean one was going around getting’ peak flows. I mean you’re drivin’ around, you know chasin’ the peak. Doin’ your best to estimate flows that were there. I mean shortly after you got the peak, you were helping all the hydro’s and stuff. We were doing bridge measurements anywhere there was a bridge mea--- bridge left to go off of, you know. Tryin’ to develop some type of rating so then you could at least track ah, how much water there was, how rapidly it was droppin’ off. Um, there was a lot of scramblin’ around, you know as things were coming, still up to the last minute tryin’ to tell anybody you could “You need–– This is on its way. You need to get it out of the way here,” kind of way thing. Um, you know and some of that word you got out through a roundabout way that you know, it was, you know like my son goes to a charter school. I mean and that was one of the things–– I mean we got lucky, the day things were getting bad, you know, that morning we'd gotten him into school, and it’s here in Greeley. And I was lucky, my wife was actually home that day, she didn't have to go to work. And there about, oh 10 o'clock in the morning it was, “You need to go get Reno out of school.”

And it was “Oh okay, well I'll get up and get a shower and get dressed,” and it was like “No, you get in the car as you are and go get him from school because unless you want to drive to Denver to come back home or to go pick him up, you know in another two three hours we aren't have a bridge around here left around.” Eh, I was off a little bit. The one at Kersey it was, eh, closer to about three hours or four before it finally went. But, I mean but then when she went in to do that, you know, as you talk to the school then they started saying “Well maybe we oughtta contact some of the other parents around that live outside of town." So, I mean that did get some of them out, but I mean in that meantime you were–– It was still, you were rattling anybody you could, ah, “You, you, this is coming and on that same line, tell everybody you know around there you need to get moved.”

And the bigger part was just chasing the peak and figuring out the timin’ on how fast it was moving, so at least the people further downstream could get as much warning as they could. You know? “You might have five hours, or you might have twelve, or it might be still another day and half,” but it gave guys chances to get that done. Same thing, anything ahead of it that you could, you were tryin’ to get in there and yank our equipment out before it was it was ruined, and, ah, some of that you got and some of it you didn't. You know? I mean things happen so fast

that, you know, you spend fifteen minutes here, and by the time you got done with it, it was borderline whether you should really even be there or not. It was, you need to get out of here kind of thing. So, I mean it was busy.

NG: [Laughs]. I believe it.

WS: And you know, even now trying to think–– I mean a lot of it’s just a blur. You were doing stuff and you weren't really paying att— It's, “I need to do this and this,” and then trying to think back, “Well what all I do that day?” I mean, you were–– I mean constantly scramble–– I mean that was another thing that we found moving forward that normally, hardly anybody wants to look at our site on stream gages. And I mean that’s what, as commissioners we rely on those stream gages to figure out what’s happenin’ and time it. But now, everybody in the world was pinging that website trying to get to it. So, then it was for awhile we were blind... to for even the gages that were still workin’, you couldn't actually get to the website, to get the data. So they have since then also kind of created a backdoor way to, you know, it’s kind of a mirrored server that only we can get into, so then if you have anything like this happen it isn't, “Well if I try 42 times maybe I’ll get lucky and get in there.” So, I mean there’s a lot of lessons on stuff that nobody really thought about but, you know it’s been you know 30, 40 years since we've had a flood. So.

NG: Did you have any prior experience with the prior flood the Big Thompson in '76?

WS: Well, I-I mean was around. I was young, but you know I remember ‘em. You know more so it was I remember–– you know, I was young. But, I was this angry, I was angry then because it, ah, it messed up my day quite a bit, um, just ‘cause it took out bridges in. And so, my bus route to and from school, it added an hour onto it. So it's like, “I gotta get up an hour earlier in the morning, and I have an hour less in the afternoon.” I mean I was in grade school, but, you know, that's still something in my head that I remember just how to me that was just devastating. It was like “Oh, an hour of my playtime is gone!” You know?

Um, and so I remember that and vaguely I remember the '73 flood. You know, like I said again, I was in grade school and stuff, but I remember you know, and this one I'm gonna say off the top of my–– you know, some of me wonders if it’s really worse or equal to?

But a lot of things changed. You know, in my head I remember distinctly the area where Highway 34 washed out. You know what that was like during the, ah, the '73 flood and how high the water was back then, you know I can still picture it in my head. You know that house was underwater and that house and because that's also the area where I grew up. So you knew those people, you know, even as a young kid. And this one, you know, the damage was a whole lot worse but there’s a lot of changed conditions. You know, Highway 34 wasn’t where it was, you know, today. It wasn’t that way in '73 it was still just what they call now Business 34 back then. So when they put that in they created a whole lot more kind of dikes and dams along through that corridor to elevate it to put the highway in that weren’t in place in that point in time. So, you

know, that was something, I don’t think that anybody really thought about of, if we have this giant magnitude flood, what's raising this road all through here gonna? I mean, I'm sure they looked at it, but they didn't it have the impact that it does. And, and back then still, too, things were different on the river itself back then, too.

Um, you know, back in those days there wasn’t as much EPA regulations on things, you know and, and I don’t want to come out like I’m anti-EPA, anti-environment but there’s a lot of concern for some animals that I do question a little the concern for ‘em. The big one being the Prebbles Jumping Mouse. Um, that seems to be, that's endangered, but anywhere you want to do a project, they seem to find him. So I kind of scratch my head on how endangered he really is. But, you know back then, they used to get out, they’d dredge parts of parts of the river. They’d clean all those sandbars out from underneath the bridges and stuff, and that all went away because of the EPA restrictions on it. And I think that added a lot to the damage that we saw from the floods ‘cause, you know, if half the capacity that used to have to go under the bridges is now full of debris, sandbars, trees growin’ in it. I mean it just escalates the damages that's gonna be caused because you can't get that water through there anymore. So, I mean I think that's something that really oughta be maybe looked at a little bit. Whether that can be done or not, I don't know. You know, I don't want to say just go out there and destroy everything and I don't care what critter might be livin’ there. But, you know I’m not sayin’ go back to the days when they dredged the whole river bottom fairly regularly, but at least at all the bridges. Keep, you know before it and after it you know, I don’t know if it’s an eighth of a mile or somthin’ before on both ends of it. I mean that’s something, you probably ought to look at cause in my head I look at things the other way too, of “Well yeah, you might just disrupt some animals home cleaning that out right there, but how much destruction was there to their home when this whole thing got washed out because of a big flood?” You know, th–– whatever lived there if you aren't tearing everything up for miles on both sides of it, they probably are going to come back a whole lot better than if you disrupt this little eighth of a mile section. But, that’s not my job, so I, but I mean there is some frustration in that, you know, that, you know, that I think added to the problems that we saw.

You know, um, you know things change you know for better, for worse. But, it something I think somebody ought to look at a little bit–– is maybe we oughta get back to where we at least keep underneath under the bridges, you know, and a little bit of the approach and the discharge after ‘em, kind of cleaned out and free of these sandbars and trees and everything else. Ah, I think that might help things a lot in the future so.

NG: Absolutely. Um, I was reading an article prior to coming here about kind of stream restoration efforts after the flood and how in some of the places where they want to redirect the river is causing issues with priority and water rights on the river. Can you speak to that issue at all?

WS: Yeah, on my end of things I got really lucky through–– I mean I had a lot of structures destroyed, but, for the most part, where diversion structures are the river’s still there. I mean, on the St. Vrain that’s a different case. You know, there’s some of those that are a half mile or further away now from where the current river lies. Um, you know it’s kind of one those deals of, you know it’s gonna get expensive one way or the other, and by right, you know if the river isn’t at their location anymore, I mean that ditch company does have the right then to just extend their canal to get to it. I mean, it’s kind of one of those deals, they can go in and condemn somebody–– right, wrong, or indifferent–– you know, it’s part of our, of the laws of our state. They can come in and condemn somebody’s land to reconnect their ditch to the river.

Um, I mean it’s kind of a touchy deal, I mean ‘cause they do that, you’re condemnin’ someone’s property and takin’ somethin’ away from somebody else to do that. Um, on that same line, you know divertin’ the river back where it was, I mean, there’s a reason why the river is now where it is, and, you know, you can move it back over, but if you, when you have–– I’m not gonna say if, when because one day again, were gonna have another one of these events. They happen. Um, more than likely it’s gonna want to go back to where it is right now again, anyway. Um, it’s, unless you really want to work and spend a ton on armorin’ that section of the river so it can’t change course, you know, waters always gonna go the path of least resistance no matter how hard you try and make it do somethin’ different, its gonna go the path of least resistance. That’s what water does and, and personally I think they’re probably better of just chasin’ the river. I mean, I know that’s expensive and for the ditch companies, and it’s bad for whoever’s property might be in between it, but I personally think that’s the better course to go because, like I said, I think if you move it someday there’s gonna be a flood again, and you’re just gonna go through this all over again.

I don’t know. That’s…

NG: Fair enough. [Laughs]. How well do you think your office was prepared for the challenges of the flood?

WS: ….I mean, I think our communication with ah, you know, generally the water commissioners, dam safety and I mean the hydro’s for the most part, considering nobody’s–– we’ve never had any done–– thought about doin’ any type of formal training for this–– ah you know a lot of, you know–– nobody had any contingency plans in place of you know “if this happens.” You know, considerin’ the fact that nobody in this office ever actually had to deal with somethin’ like this, like I said it’s been forty years since we’ve had somethin’ along the lin–– I mean we did, alright. I wouldn’t say it was great.

You know, there’s some parts of our offices that it’s like “have you even turned on the radio to see or the news to see what’s going on?” I mean, there’s some people, some parts of it that just kind of acted like business as usual kind of thing. You know? Um, and, and other people, you know–– But on that same lines, I think other people really went above and beyond that more than

made up for—for that end of stuff. You know, I mean yeah there’s some definite lessons you picked up out of there and said “You know, we got a real loop hole right here that we need––” but also moving forward, you know, you filled in those loop holes.

It’s like I mentioned before about the stream gages and stuff. Now we got weigh that we can at least, somethin’ like this happens again, we can get in and see what’s happenin’. You know, I mean that’s, that was a huge part of it. If you’re blind and the only way you got anything is somebody drivin’ by and lookin’ that, you know, now you’re right there where it’s bad, as opposed to maybe being further downstream to be proactive about preventing some damage or somethin’ like that. So, I mean movin’ forward I think we’ve, we’ve gotten a lot more things in place. Um, and a guy kinda knows, on that same lines we have ah, contacts with emergency management and so, at the time we did okay. I’m not gonna say everything was great, some people really went above and beyond, there’s holes here and there, but, you know, movin’, a lot of gu–– I mean if it happens again, while I’m still around, I think it’ll, it’ll really be a good response. You know? Yeah, okay is the best I’m gonna have to rate it.

NG: Absolutely. Um, did you guys find yourself in any unprecedented interaction with other agencies during the flood?

WS: Um, [sighs] I don’t, I don’t know. Dam safety maybe, I mean Johnny did a lot of more. Those guys had a lot more actions with other agencies than we did ourselves. I mean we dealt with, you know a lot with the USGS6 on tryin’ to gage stuff and things like that. But I mean dam safety, Johnny and those guys, I mean they were havin’ to coordinate a lot of stuff with, you know National Guard and all that stuff or a lot of those high mountain reservoirs the only way to even get to ‘em to you know, get gates open to start drainin’ ‘em so they didn’t actually breach, I mean they were gonna havin’ to get helicopter rides up in there to even get to that kind of stuff. So I mean I’d say dam safety did more with other agencies than anybody else.

NG: Okay.

WS: And that was what everybody was freakin’ out over. Everything on the news, too. That was another one of those public, um, they weren’t educated on how a dam works, so everything was a “dam was failing.” Um, when it was actually just operating the way it was supposed to, you know every dam has an emergency spillway that, if it gets too full it just automatically starts flowin’ out that, so it doesn’t you know, overtop the dam and erode things and breach it where you have a catastrophic disaster with it.

And so every camera crew that saw a spillway operating as it should it was now “Oh, the dams failing.” You know, and it’s “No, it’s doing what it’s supposed to.”

NG: [Laughs]. It’s working.

6 United States Geological Service.

WS: It might be the first time in its history of this dam that it’s ever had to do that but, it’s workin’ right. [Laughs]. You know, kind of thing? You know, so––– and that was, I mean that was kind of one of the frustrations that happens on anything. There’s a lot of kind of bad information out there that then, you know it stirs up the panic factor of everybody else: “Oh no, this––.” And, you know tryin’ to put that forest fire out, “No this, this isn’t bad. You’re okay.” You know, that kind of stuff. You know that did get a little fustratin’ because anytime you’re puttin’ out a forest fire that didn’t need to be there was time that you weren’t dealing with something else that was, you know, could make this difference on whether this fails or, or this gets destroyed or stuff like that. So I mean that was little, sometimes you wanted to say “can we just drag the media away real quick and have a real quick trainin’ day on this is good, this is bad.”

NG: [Laughs].

WS: And, but you know the media thrives on tryin’ to, you know, I don’t know. Sometimes I think they like to try and install fear in everybody, sometimes. A lot of times things have to be a whole lot worse than what they are. And then on the times that they really should be tryin’ to wake somebody up, nobody even–– it doesn’t even make news. It, it, I’m sure you’ve seen some of that too.

NG: Absolutely. Um, what do you think are some of the most important lessons learned from the 2013 flood?

WS: Um, I mean, the biggest–– Like I [sighs]. The biggest lesson I got out of it is, you know, and I blame myself, you know, for some of that, is when you tried to talk with some other agencies and people weren’t listenin’ and granted they had no real need to wanna involve us in anything for 40 years. So, I mean there’s some of that there, but a guy shouldn’t have just said “Well I’m gonna go deal with other stuff.”

Like I said, the biggest lesson is, you need to force feed yourself down their throats to get people to listen just ‘cause–– it could’ve save a whol–– there would have been, you know, a whole lot of other homes, property loss, stuff like that if a guy done that. And you blame yourself, some of that for “I should’ve gone out there and done that and I didn’t.” I went on and tried to help who I could rather than sayin’, “If I get these people’s attention I can help a lot of people.” You know and it’s, you know, forty years is a long time to go without a flood and everybody now thinks that all these other doomsday scenarios for their emergency management plans and practices, you know, “It’s a chemical spill; it’s a, you know a oil and gas well blows up, it’s,” something along those lines. And nobody around here really thought, thought out a flood. I mean yeah, they had a folder covered in dust on stuff but it’s nothing nobody really thought about this is something we really need to pay attention to. Cause after you had all those floods in the ‘60s and ‘70s, everybody though “Ah, the floods are a thing of the past. We’ve built all these flood control dams.”

You know they built Chatfield, you know, Bear Creek. All these ones where you used to have these drainages that when you’d have those big rains contributed to those flood in the ‘60s and ‘70s .

Well you know, it’s like, “Hey, we got, we got flood control dams now. We don’t have to worry about it. It’s a thing of the past.”

And everybody kind of got woke up that it could happen anytime, because the rainstorms don’t necessarily land above those flood control dams, so.

NG: It’s very true. Um, were you personally affected by the flood at all?

WS: I, none of my property. I mean all I was, it was just an inconvenience on my stuff. You know, it was, I pretty much had to take care of most things on, on the east side of the river for a while. You know, or it was a long, drawn out process of you know, getting’ clear down around Brighton, get across the river, work your way all the way back kind of thing. And then, you know it wasn’t even a quick easy one. You know, it was “Okay now I need to be, go clear to I-25 and go all the way.” And, you know I mean gettin’ around it was an inconvenience kind of thing, which, you know as–– even on those some of those, getting measurements on stream gages that were takin’ out, you know stuff that’s, you know, in reality a quarter-mile from each other, like the Poudre gage and the new one we were establishin’ on the South Platte, I mean they’re a quarter mile from each other but, it was a two hour drive to get to each of them. Cause you had to loop so far around just to get onto the other side of the river to get to it. So, inconvenience on my end of things.

You know, and then you know and then you spend a lot of time after the fact, helping people design, redesign structures so you know, their stuff would be better you know, movin’ forward. You know, it’s one of those, that there’s a few things that got destroyed in the flood that I mean, maybe it isn’t a good thing to say, but if I had to pick a diversion dam or measurin’ structure that got wiped out, at least the flood was pretty good about pickin’ the ones that “Yeah that’s probably the worst one I had.” So, so it’s not a bad thing if, you know, not that you wanted anybody to have to come up with the money to fix this stuff. I mean, but you know Meadow Island Number 2 and Beamon’s, I mean their measurements structures were junk. They were some of those ones that you’re constantly–– You know, anytime they change the amount of water they’re runnin’ we’re havin’ to do a measurement in it to apply a new shift to that structure. I mean it’s a constant battle and if one was gonna get completely taken out those were two good ones to do. You know, on that same lines, you know I don’t like the fact that, I mean they had the, they had to get a loan for two and half million dollars to fix their structures. You know, you don’t,…

NG: Expensive.

WS: …you don’t want to wish that on anybody, but you know there is some good that comes out of it too, you know? Yeah their stuff got destroyed, but they got some of the best stuff around now that’s more than likely gonna, and they, got things in place that if there is a future flood, I mean it isn’t a hundred percent guaranteed that they won’t get wiped out but the odds are really strong in their favor that they’ll be good goin’ forward, you know? And I mean their stuff had been takin’ out before, you know, some of the, some of the other floods, you know? It’d been awhile, but I mean way back in the early eighteen hun— or nineteen hundreds their stuff got destroyed then you know and it added into a whole change of all their stuff. Lots of legal agreements, you know, 1924 agreement all this kind of stuff that then manages the things they had to change from that one. Well, you know, they had a pretty good run but it’s kind of not a good section of the river. You know, they had been impacted before and so now going forward with a little better technology, newer things, they’re probably safe for quite awhile now. You know? I mean nothin’s a hundred percent guarantee because Mother Nature can always through you a curve ball, but you know, they’re probably–– and any future event they’re probably gonna be better off than just about anybody else through my section of the river. So.

NG: Do you think a lot of the irrigation companies have updated their structures after the flood? WS: Um, they did. That’s one that really did. Um, the um, you know Farmer’s Independent; they got by, no real damage. Um, they were one of the lucky ones. I mean it was, if we would have had very much more water in the river, it was, the day the peak was comin’ through, the water was startin’ to erode away where it was gonna fill their ditch whether they wanted it or not and… they skated by, by inches.

Um, you know the Western Ditch got hammered really bad and they haven’t really done a whole lot to try and solve that problem. You know some of that I think could’ve been avoided, um, if they weren’t tryin’ to run recharge when the water got there.

Um, Platteville––Platteville Milling um, I mean they have some new head gates and diversion dams. Um, their ditch survived. I’ve still had–– that’s one of those anomalies that you haven’t figured out how it survived. I mean it overtopped, filled the ditch, and most anything else that you know that happened it you know it blew the ditch banks out and it just filled it up and kept running over the side. It didn’t erode anything, didn’t do anything. So they got some really good dirt there or something. I—I you know, there’s some of those that got really lucky.

Um… you know, um there’s other companies that are still tryin’ to figure out, you know, damages that happened, how are we gonna fix this, or can we justify fixin’ this. Burlington down in Denver there by Sand Creek, I mean their havin’ to–– they’re workin’ on tryin’ fix –– their ditch actually siphons under Sand Creek. A lot of damages with that— They’re tryin’ to put a patch on that. They also had a pipeline that ran from Metro Sewer to their ditch that got taken out and now it’s still a big fight on whose even gonna pay for that to fix that pipeline. Ah, the last I heard the estimates was like four and half million. Um, you know that’s one of those, “Do we actually get enough water to justify the cost of redoin’ that?”

Um, you know some people made some improvements. Other ones, you know, that’s the other thing. These irrigation companies, you know, it’s hard for ‘em. As much as they’d like to improve ‘em, it’s like, “How can we… how can we pay that bill back if we get the loan?” I mean granted, you know CBC had great zero interest loans, but you still gotta pay that money back. You know and when you’re talkin’ millions of dollars for a guys that are just farmin’ that’s, that’s a pretty hard. You know, yeah it’d be good to improve things, but the cost of that— You know, and that was the other––– I guess that was one frustration you had, too. There was a lot of FEMA7. [Sighs]. That ah, a lot of guys went through the process to try and get some FEMA money for repairs and the red tape, paperwork that they went through. They’d have one guy that would tell them one thing. They’d get all that stuff rounded up, paperwork for ‘em filled out; they’d come back two weeks later, and now they had a new cases worker that wanted somethin’ completely different. And, you know, 90 percent if the ditch companies just finally said, “Forget it. It isn’t even worth the headache.” Um, and some of FEMA’s rules that were in place, too, you know, it was they’d pay, you know it needed to have some metropolitan interest in it.

You know, if it was an ag8 ditch, strictly irrigation –– “Don’t even talk to us.”

If you were a city, well then would pay some of the damage. That city’s interest, you know, to fix it. And you look at––– And to me, I’m lookin’ at it as “Well yeah, the city might have 5 percent interest in this ditch, so that’s all they want to pay but if you don’t fix 100 percent of the ditch. You can’t fix 5 percent of the ditch and get ‘em water.” You gotta fix the whole thing. You know, so I mean that , you know, it was other agencies— FEMA I kind of block that out the back of my mind. That was really, all the interaction with that was just a nightmare, where it got to the point, same thing of eventually you just even gave up tryin’. You know all your ditch companies that gave up and every time you thought you’d hammered somethin’ out again to get ‘em some help and then it just turned into a black hole that spiraled and, and probably I shouldn’t bad mouth FEMA, but that, that was a really bad…

NG: You wouldn’t be the first person to.

WS: Yeah, yeah that was ah, for interactin’ with another agency you, you tried a lot to try and get help for your ditch companies and farmers and stuff like that through there and even the cities and stuff, and it was, that was a nightmare. So, I probably shouldn’t even brought that bad memory up.

NG: [Laughs]. I’m sorry.

WS: That’s okay.

7 Federal Emergency Management Agency. 8 Agricultural ditch.

NG: Um, are there any other topics that we’ve covered that you’d like to return to for clarification or add any new information?

WS: Off the top of my head I’m not–– that’s bad, I kind of rambled around stuff, and when I’d be…

NG: Oh no, its fine.

WS: … talkin’ about somethin’ I’d “Oh yeah and at this.” So, I think I got back to anything and everything that there was.

NG: Awesome and then any final thoughts or subjects that we haven’t covered yet that you’d like to talk about?

WS: Um, I don’t know. There’s some of those in there that [sighs] on that same line, you know everybody, ‘60s and ‘70s were awful. We had these every couple of years. A lot of things went in place to help prevent them or at least, you know, lessen the damage from ‘em. Um, then we haven’t had these rain events for a long time and everybody kind of forgot that this could happen. Um, the bad thing is, you know, during this flood and shortly after everybody was once again talkin’ about, “We need to clean under bridges. We need to maybe build some more flood control reservoirs.” And now it’s already kinda pushed onto a back burner that— I mean it’s sad to say that things could really go into place to help prevent some of this, you need this to happen again, like next year to actually get people to do something about it, and that’s, that’s in some ways kind of sad that to even, you need to have the same disaster multiple times to actually get anybody to then finally figure a way to get all of the red tape out of way. To actually do some of these projects, you know? Um, you know, dams in particular. And you know, for whatever reason we can’t seem to build anymore storage around here, whether it’s strictly storage or, you know, for a flood control type of thing yo-you can’t touch it, and it comes down to again. There’s [lower’s voice] always a mouse involved.

Um, that’s, ah, [laughs] and on that same plan for our state, I mean they’ve already shown, you know, in another 30 years, how short were gonna be for the water supply that we need just for the population we have and what’s expected to grow. And it’s that same line if you got some storage in place, so like on a year like this one or 2011 or some of those really good years, you can rat-hole some away. On the same line, you maintain a flood control pool in there that if you had an event like this–– I mean is it gonna totally eliminate all of it? No, but its dang sure gonna make it a whole lot less.

I mean, if Bear Creek reservoir and Chatfield weren’t in place, I mean this flood would’ve been, it would’ve–– I mean as bad as it was, I mean Bear Creek, I mean, parts up there where people used to park above where they park the trees were underwater up there. Those big tall pine trees up there, I mean that’s how much water they held back there. I mean if you had a few more of those, it could’ve really helped a lot. You know? Um, but, there’s always, there’s always a

mouse or–– and that’s that same line, you know, nobody wants their home to be condemned. You know, now it’s gonna be a lake, you know, but you need water, too. And if you can also kind of control it so you aren’t destroying other people’s property, you know that’s a good th— I mean, I got a spot up by, oh kind of closer to Oak Creek up in the mountains that, you know, we got a little huntin’ cabin up there that one day, I’m not gonna have. I mean its slotted one day a reservoirs gonna go there. Do I like the thought that you know, a place we’ve gone for years and years and years to get away is gonna be gone? No, I don’t like, but on the same line we need water and if it can also help mitigate some flood damage. I mean it’s somethin’ we need, you know? Um, so I do wish maybe, somehow or another people could really look at that and it doesn’t take two or three more floods before they actually get serious about it. You know? Cleaning out under bridges and maybe lookin’ at some more storage buckets that can also act as flood control. I mean that would be, that would be some good things. You know? I don’t know.

NG: Very interesting. Thank you, I’ll put that in my report. Um, well I think that’s it for my questions, unless there’s anything else you’d like to talk about?

WS: I don’t think so. Not right off the top of my head. So.

NG: Awsome, thank you.