March 07, 2024 | NEWS | By Charley Sutherland
While it might be years, a group of urban planners, waterway experts and philanthropic leaders could create a plan to radically transform Monument Creek, which flows behind campus.
That’s right: playing kids and folks floating on innertubes might someday fill the creek, which, in its current odiferous state, Colorado College student Alli Williams ‘26 describes as “disappointing, worrisome, murky, and mysterious.”
If you decided to go for a swim in Monument Creek today, you’d be faced with dodging the occasional submerged shopping cart and maybe some disposed needles, but you’d also be swimming in your own feces as the city routinely discharges wastewater into Monument Creek.
The vision reimagines the creek and includes a river amphitheater and stage right off campus, new pedestrian bridges to cross the water, sloped lawn terraces, a creek side pedestrian trail, and — wait for it — a beach just south of Uintah Street.
“While we’re not gonna have class four rapids, it could still be a great place for families, a great place for kids,” Christian Lieber, the president of N.E.S. Inc., a landscape architecture and urban design firm and Colorado Springs Creek Plan consultant team member, said in an interview.
For the “College Landing at Uintah” portion, the plan states Colorado College will be a critical partner.
The college’s sustainability director, Ian Johnson, said that while CC is certainly open to the idea of revitalizing Monument Creek, the administration is not currently in conversation with the COS Creek Plan group.
One sticking point: The plan seems to erase Stewart Field, which Johnson said is not a part of Colorado College’s master plan.
In response, Lieber said the plan encourages community members to think about the best uses for land along the banks of the creek. Ongoing community dialogue about the role of the creek is a “healthy conversation,” he said.
“Over time,” Lieber added, “it will be up to Colorado College to assess and deliberate whether or not change and access to the creek makes sense for the college, students, sports programs, and the environment.”
For his part, Johnson believes a revitalized creek could burst the bubble between Colorado College and the greater Colorado Springs community. An amphitheater or stage with concerts or a sand beach, where kids — including college kids — might come to play, could bring together these groups who currently have few opportunities to interact.
Courtesy of COS Creek Plan
Today, Monument Creek is segmented by large drop structures, which function as a barrier to the free travel of fish. By constructing a series of riffles, drops, and pools, a river flows more naturally.
A project of this scale begins by restoring the natural function of the creek, Lieber said.
According to the U.S. Forest Service, riffles are quick-moving shallow sections of rivers or creeks. Runs are deeper, move slightly slower, and have less turbulent water. Pools are the deepest and water moves slowly through them.
Environmental science professor Charlotte Gabrielson said urban waterway revitalization projects like this one are about trying to make a river or creek run how it would originally – without human intervention.
By mimicking the original state of the waterway, revitalization projects re-create diverse habitats for different species. For trout, pools are a good place to lay eggs, and riffles are useful for movement up and down the waterway, Gabrielson said.
Gabrielson added that such projects can introduce heterogeneity – more habitats for more species and improve the overall health of important riparian ecosystems.
The first phase of the project is just south of Colorado College at America the Beautiful Park, along the Tiger Trail at the confluence of Monument and Fountain Creeks, “the heart of our watershed,” as Leiber describes it.
The master plan states the America the Beautiful phase of the project will take five years; Lieber said the whole project, because of its scale will take decades.
COS Creek Plan’s vision is to reintegrate the park with Monument and Fountain Creeks and provide recreational opportunities.
Despite public perception about the cleanliness of the creek, it’s quietly a pretty clean waterway, according to Leiber. Colorado Springs, the largest city in the U.S. without a river, has never been a big manufacturing hub, where pollutants were constantly washed into Monument Creek.
For Lieber, it’s a good starting point for an urban waterway.
There’s a bunch of trash in the creek, according to Lieber, but when you look at pollutants from a part-per-million perspective, it’s not so bad. The South Platte, which runs through Denver, was in a far worse position when the city began the river restoration in our capital city, he noted.
Then, there’s the poop problem.
Johnson said the city treats the water to discharge standards, and it’s clean enough, but right now it’s not exactly water you would want to be wading in.
Monument Creek used to be a winding waterway, but following historic flooding in the 1930s, the city channelized the creek to follow the I-25 corridor.
The water moves quickly and in a relatively straight line. Naturally flowing rivers have lots of slow-moving water, Johnson said. When rivers meander and flow slowly, they undergo processes of biofiltration – the surrounding grasses clean the river.
That doesn’t happen on Monument Creek. Despite Lieber’s optimism about the cleanliness of the creek, Johnson said the group has a lot of work to do to make Monument Creek an appealing waterway for human recreation.
Erosion of the creek over time has made the banks much steeper, so a large part of the project is just connecting the trail to the waterway, Lieber said. Monument Creek has a lower volume of water when compared to neighboring waterways like the Arkansas in Pueblo or the South Platte in Denver.
Big waves are unlikely, but mellow tubing is a possibility, Lieber said.
In 1871, General William Jackson Palmer, something of a founding father of Colorado Springs, had a master plan, which showed Monument Creek very much at the heart of our city. According to Lieber, Palmer viewed Monument Creek as central to the city.
Lieber said Palmer’s initial vision faded and for one reason or another, some started to view Monument Creek more as a workhorse, with a singular important quality: moving stormwater out of the city.
Courtesy of COS Creek Plan
In Denver, they now have an annual fishing tournament in the heart of downtown outside REI’s flagship store. To Lieber, that’s integral in changing public perception of the cleanliness of the water and generally the role of the waterway.
Lushly planted clean urban waterways and accompanying greenway trails filled with fit people jogging seem to be a common feature of cities much hipper and happening than Colorado Springs.
Sydney Morris ‘24 said in Boise, her hometown, people regularly raft, float on intertubes, fly fish, surf and kayak on an artificial wave, and walk their dogs on the Boise River and its accompanying greenway trail.
“It provides a space for people to interact with nature, even in the middle of the city,” Morris said.
Lieber said he’ll judge the success of the Monument Creek revitalization project on three things: fish, birds, and kids. Healthy fish and bird habitats will indicate a riparian ecosystem brought back to life, and kids will indicate the creek’s value as a community asset and an enjoyable, safe, public space.
Johnson sees the revitalization project as an environmental stewardship opportunity for Colorado College. The project won’t radically improve the college’s carbon neutrality goals, Johnson said, but by taking care of and engaging with nature in our backyard the project can foster a mindset of environmental awareness and accountability.
Observant Tiger Trail users may have noticed heavy equipment in and around Monument Creek for the past few weeks. This is a separate Colorado Springs Utilities project to stabilize a section of Monument Creek right off campus to protect wastewater infrastructure below the creek bed.
Lieber doesn’t think Monument Creek will ever beat out the quad as a central gathering point for the Colorado College community, but he thinks it would be a pretty sweet addition.