The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) has awarded the Sanderson Gulch Resiliency Project $4 million in PROTECT Grant funding – enhancing safety, accessibility, and connectivity for Ruby Hill residents. Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) Grant program provides funding to ensure surface transportation resilience to natural hazards including climate change, sea level rise, flooding, extreme weather events, and other natural disasters through support of planning activities, resilience improvements, community resilience and evacuation routes, and at-risk coastal infrastructure.

Sanderson Gulch flows from west to east, through the Denver Ruby Hill neighborhood, and outfalls into the South Platte River. The section on Sanderson Gulch addressed in this project is located between West Arkansas Avenue and West Florida Avenue. The existing culverts at Arkansas Ave and Florida Ave are currently undersized for the 100-year event and the pedestrian undercrossing at Arkansas Ave requires updates for comfortable pedestrian use. This project will improve Sanderson Gulch, replace the culverts, bring the multiuse path to current CCD standards, improve the Arkansas under-crossing, create a new under-crossing at Florida and improve the floodplain for nearby residents. The project is currently under design but the construction window is unknown at this moment.

We are excited to continue to work on this project that enhances the connectivity and safety within the Ruby Hill neighborhood and restores the Sanderson Gulch channel to a more natural state and alignment – providing resiliency for years to come.