Large Amounts of Rainwater Bring Flooding to Edgewater Residents

The flooded Kruse basement on Otis Street

Usually Coloradans are excited to hear the pitter patter of rain because of the nourishment it brings to our dry land but the last few months, many Edgewater residents have cringed when they hear rain. Since people began building houses at the shores of Sloan’s Lake in the late 1800’s, the city of Edgewater has had issues with flooding. Drainage updates have been done throughout the history of Edgewater and one can see berms between the Jefferson High School track and Pierce as well as on the east side of Citizen’s Park that are meant to protect the city’s residents in the event of a major flooding incident.

On the City of Edgewater website, you can view a map of the FEMA flood zones.

Given the amount of rain over the past few months, numerous Edgewater residents have had issues with flooding in their basements and crawl spaces. Here is a small sampling issues residents are having:

From Travis Kruse on the 2000 block of Otis Street:

This past Friday (June 6th) I noticed during the morning that we had a little water coming into the basement. This has happened on a small scale in the past and I thought nothing of it really. I had to run out to the airport to pickup some family that was coming in for the weekend- and left the house around 8:30a for the 9:30 pickup. When we got back home I directed my family to the downstairs room they would be staying in to find that in my problem corner of the house there was probably an inch or two of standing water. I checked another room in the house that had leaked a little in May and sure enough it was flooding as well. At the opposite side of the house we have our laundry room with a drain in the floor- the water was coming up through the drain and flooding this room as well. Soon, despite my best efforts shop-vaccing the water as quickly as I possibly could my large main room in the basement was totally flooded- the carpet had a ripple effect when stepped on. 

We had a water mitigation team come out the property as soon as possible, and opted to have them tear out the carpet and the pad. Unfortunately for us, this revealed some old 9×9″ tiles that contain asbestos. We had them tested as well as the drywall- everything came back positive. In order to mitigate any mold issues we will no have to have an asbestos abatement team come out and completely destroy the finished basement I once had. Our flood insurance does not look like it will cover any damage at this point and neither will our home owners insurance as this appears to be caused by ground water and not something like a broken pipe in the basement. 

Furthermore- We have noticed for over a month a house up the street from us constantly pumping water from their basement- it would seem that our entire side of Otis Street has some severe water issues, and I really fear that given the era of construction and the materials they used back then- that the asbestos issue is going to affect a lot of people. In addition to all of that- back when they paved the alley way I was told they were intentionally grading it to avoid water flowing onto my property but instead the city water easement we live next to- this was not engineered well. Water dumps into both sides of my driveway routinely flooding it even during small storms- to the point that I won’t park in back if I know some rain is on the way. When it gets really bad like it was this past Friday my entire backyard turns into a pond. 

From Christopher Wangelin on 2500 block of Chase Street:

Yep, underground river below our home. Almost 3 months of constant sump pumping. Worse than that spring 7-8 years ago. Water is seeping up into the cellar floor. End of Chase St turned into putty.

From Caryn Thomas on 2200 block of Lamar Street:

We have 3 sump pumps and 2 of them have been running every 20 minutes for at least 8 weeks. We also have a small stream in the basement. We call the sump water The Thomas Creek..

Feel free to share your experiences with flooding in Edgewater below in the comments.

Joel Newton

Joel has been a resident of Edgewater, Colorado with his family since 2012. He is the Executive Director of local education nonprofit Edgewater Collective and Editor of the Edgewater Echo.