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Urban Stream Management

Aerial photo of river moving through city

Urban Stream Management Overview

As an agency that manages approximately 3,200 miles of stream corridors in the Denver metropolitan area, MHFD recognizes its role in ensuring regional stream management successfully sustains high-functioning streams capable of conveying flood and storm flows. The ultimate goal? Protect people, property, and our environment. Strategies to address specific stream management problems often involve trade-offs between the five elements of urban stream function.

Managing urban streams includes prioritizing and designing the actions identified in the planning process and then implementing those actions through MHFD maintenance or capital improvement projects. Following construction, vegetation establishment is key to a project’s success and requires monitoring and adaptively managing the vegetation. Through monitoring and adaptive management, a new baseline is defined, which feeds back into the planning process — it’s a constant cycle.

Urban Stream Management Process

Actions from Planning

Confluence Work Plans, Maintenance Eligiibility Program (MEP), Development Improvement Project (DIP)

Design

HFLMS, Criteria Updates, Multi-disciplinary Teams

Construction

Specification/Bid Tab Updates, Vegetation Infrastructure, Inspections by Ecologists

Establishment

Vegetation Establishment Plan

Monitor

R&D Monitoring, Set Trigger Thresholds, USAP

Adaptively Manage

Adaptive Management Plan, Routine Maintenance, Vegetation Management

Existing Conditions

USAP, Remote Sensing, Field Observations

Stakeholders

Involving stakeholders in the steps will promote ownership and engagement in the process.

Urban Stream Management Best Practices

It is important to understand the context and the social, economic, and political environment in which management decisions are made. In response, MHFD has identified eight best practices that support integrating Higher-Functioning Lower-Maintenance Systems (HFLMS) principles into District projects and urban stream management.

The following urban stream management best practices outline the eight key points that define, guide, and measure the activities and outcomes of urban stream management. They represent a summary of principles and concepts presented in MHFD documents, scientific literature, and practitioner experience.

Improves public safety by minimizing flood and fluvial hazard risk along a corridor.

Draws on many types of knowledge.

Informed by watershed and stream context.

Supports community connections and values.

Assessed against clear goals and objectives using measurable indicators.

Seeks the highest level of recovery or resiliency possible.

Gains cumulative benefit when applied at the watershed and corridor scales.

Integrated into stream management and master planning.