Estes Loop environmental assessment due Tuesday

ESTES PARK — Crowds of locals and visitors will gather around Lake Estes on Monday night to watch the annual Independence Day fireworks. However, that pyrotechnic display is likely to be dwarfed by the fireworks sure to follow a day later, when the long-awaited federal environmental assessment is released for the controversial $17 million Downtown Estes Loop.

The town’s idea to turn downtown Estes Park streets into a one-way loop to ease summer traffic jams has triggered fierce debate and division among residents, business owners and town officials. Besides easing tourist-traffic gridlock, Loop proponents have said federal money for the project would pay for replacement of three of five bridges damaged during the flooding of 2013. If the bridges aren’t replaced, they said, the next federal floodplain designation could be expanded to include much of the downtown area, raising property owners’ insurance rates.

Loop opponents have countered that the plan would hurt their businesses by steering eastbound traffic away from the shops along East Elkhorn Avenue, the main downtown commercial street, and disturbing the peace of homes and rental cottages along a parallel street to the south that would become eastbound U.S. Highway 36 under the Loop plan. Some opponents say improving parking options and crosswalks downtown are better solutions, and have posted signs in their businesses to enlist tourists in their anti-Loop campaign.

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The town in 2013 applied for $13 million in Federal Lands Access Program (FLAP) funding for the project because the project was seen as a way to improve access to Rocky Mountain National Park, which has entrances just west of Estes Park on U.S. Highways 36 and 34, and federal officials had said the Loop option was the only acceptable alternative to receive the FLAP money.

The town already has $4.2 million in hand through a grant from the Colorado Department of Transportation’s “Responsible Acceleration of Maintenance and Partnerships (RAMP) program.

The FLAP grant tentatively has been awarded as well, but acceptance by the town is pending the final environmental assessment as part of a National Environmental Policy Act study, a process that’s triggered when a federal agency develops a proposal such as the Loop to fund. The assessment was to study the impacts to the community if the one-way couplet plan were to move forward or if no action is taken. After the assessment is studied by town officials and the public has a chance to weigh in, town officials must decide whether to go ahead with the Loop project or scrap it and look for other alternatives — probably without the federal money.

The document will be released for public review and comment on Tuesday, July 5, and the public comment period will extend through Aug. 5. The study, appendices, technical reports and traffic simulation will be posted on an Environmental Assessment page at the project website — www.downtownestesloop.com — for public download and viewing. In addition, hard copies of the EA and comment forms will be available at the town clerk’s office in Room 130 at Town Hall, 170 MacGregor Ave.; the Estes Valley Library, 335 E. Elkhorn Ave.; and the Estes Park Visitor Center, 500 Big Thompson Ave.; as well as CDOT’s Region 4 office at 10601 W. 10th St. in Greeley.