By Greg Avery
Camera Staff Writer

Sugarloaf-area residents have had more than a decade to prepare mentally, but now there's only a week left before the dynamite and bulldozers move in.

Boulder's Lakewood Pipeline building project reaches "The Narrows" section of Sugarloaf Road this week, and by June 7 people in the 600-home mountain hamlet will have to take the long way into Boulder.

Boulder is replacing the 94-year-old water pipeline connecting its Lakewood Reservoir and Betasso water treatment plant because the concrete pipe is in bad shape. The pipeline carries as much as 90 percent of Boulder's winter water supply.

Due to the construction, a section of Sugarloaf Road through The Narrows — between the Sweeney Mill and Sugar Court — will be closed daily to all but emergency vehicles between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. every day except Sunday. The closures are scheduled to last until late August.

For mother Beth Waldner, who has three young children and lives a couple of miles up Sugarloaf Road from The Narrows, the construction means a 27-mile drive for daily necessities in Boulder instead of the normal five.

"And that's on a washboard, twisty-turny road. ... It's going to be extraordinarily difficult," Waldner said. "It's going to be very tough for a lot of people up here."

The additional commute adds expense and drive time and rearranges everyone's personal schedules, she said.

She said she also worries about fire conditions in a drought year and the ability of emergency vehicles to pass quickly through sections of roadway being dynamited.

Under the county orders, the complete road closures must end by Aug. 22, when school bus traffic starts again.

All of Sugarloaf Road, starting at Boulder Canyon, will be off limits to cyclists for the summer months — even on days when The Narrows is reopened — to avoid cyclists having to dodge heavy construction trucks and motorists frazzled by the delays coming down the canyon.

Two separate construction crews will be working all summer at either end of the pipeline route, burying pipeline under The Narrows and over Peewink Mountain to the west.

In addition to those crews, various city, county, forest service and inspection people will be working on the pipeline.

"It's a very, very big project," said Mary Rozaklis, the city's liaison with Sugarloaf residents.

It is scheduled to end in December. But the start of the project has already been delayed more than a month, leaving a possibility that the construction could stretch into next year.

Contact Greg Avery at (303) 473-1307 or averyg@thedailycamera.com.

May 31, 2002

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