KERSEY, Colo. — The Colorado Department of Transportation plans to have all of Colorado’s flood-ravaged roads completely rebuilt by December 2017. The four-year project is expensive and CDOT says it might need extra money to complete it.
Congress has allocated $450 million in funds. Buit CDOT says it might need to bump up its “needs request” to $595 million.
“We might need the $595 million, but we won’t know until we start getting into the design. We’re just in the design process right now for a lot of our projects,” said Johnny Olson, who works on CDOT’s Flood Recovery Project.
If CDOT wants to do every major repair in the best way possible, it would likely need the $595 million.
All of CDOT’s planned repairs have beentemporarily rebuilt. Only 15 percent have been completely rebuilt.
“We’re going to have to come back and redo some of these roads to make them better,” Olson said.
The additional $140 million to $145 million wouldn’t come from just CDOT. It would be split up with other grants and matched funds from affected communities, meaning CDOT would only need to come up with about $65 million.