By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

An eclectic partnership of agencies with broadly different agendas is working together on one multi-purpose project that addresses their divergent needs – transportation improvements and related road safety work on CO 119 into Black Hawk that will help start to clean a polluted creek dead from the leftovers of the mining industry and help preserve wildlife.

It’s called the North Clear Creek Restoration Project.

The complete package developed by the North Clear Creek Mitigation Advisory Committee is estimated to cost $82.7 million, and the Colorado Department of Transportation is taking a gamble that it can win a $62.5 million discretionary grant from the federal stimulus program to enable it to do the entire project at once.

Other agencies, including CDOT, the local casinos through the Silver Dollar Metropolitan District, the State Division of Wildlife and the Department of Public Health and Environment, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are on board with funding contributions.

Read information about the total project and the grant application here.

Also serving on the committee are representatives of the Colorado School of Mines, University of Colorado-Denver, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal Highway Administration, the state Department of Natural Resources- Division of Reclamation and Mining Safety (DRMS), City of Black Hawk, Gilpin County and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Click here to pull up a map showing all of the projects ranging from Black Hawk to Golden within the canyon and along U.S. 40.

But if the U.S. Department of Transportation, which is administering the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, doesn’t select the CO 119 project in the crowded national competition for grants, the partners’ antes will still go toward paying for a smaller piece of the overall project.

View a computer simulation of the widened CO 119 and two new bridges that will eliminate three dangerous curves.

The Main Street South segment of the project is only a mile and a half long but includes a realignment of the winding canyon road into the casino town that will aim straight across North Clear Creek on two new bridges to eliminate three dangerous curves. It will also extend the four-laning of the highway a bit farther south from the town. It will have a median divider with full lighting. Extensive retaining walls will be built to hold the widening.

But the highway work will also enable some much-anticipated environmental cleanup work to start as well.

Acidic discharge from mine tailings through the National Tunnel has killed fish life in this reach of North Clear Creek. The tunnel empties into the creek within the project area, and the excess rock that will be excavated or moved during the road work will provide the start of passive clean-up of the pollutants. It will also be used to create pools and riffles to encourage the creation of habitat for fish. Its full scope includes a wildlife bridge from mountain to mountain over CO 119 just north of its canyon junction with U.S. 6. That will allow bighorn sheep to cross the corridor separated from the highway.You can read about those aspects of the project here.

The initial project also will include adding more mobile phone coverage deep in the canyon, and bring some Intelligent Transportation Systems networking to the corridor.

Russel Cox, CDOT’s resident engineer for the Foothills Residency that covers the corridor, said he believes that with or without the stimulus grant, this first segment can proceed to construction. CDOT already has obtained the Federal Highway Administration’s permission to proceed once the limited funding is secured.

Cox knows the chances of getting the grant are slim – agencies all over the country have submitted $58 billion worth of projects to compete for only $1.5 billion in funding. He thinks the North Clear creek Preservation Project stands out, however, because of the multi-disciplinary nature of the work. It features wildlife preservation, fish habitat restoration, environmental cleanup of a century’s heritage of pollution and rockfall mitigation as well as transportation capacity and safety improvements.

“We’ve got something put together that’s perfect and everyone loves it,” Cox said. “We gave the casinos kicking in money, the health department, the EPA – it’s a Superfund site. It’s logical in the we have excess rock and they need rock for their end of the project so it saves both of us money.

The original estimate for this first Main Street South segment was $35 million to $40 million, but Cox is hopeful that bids will come in lower.