This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Longmont, Colo. • While area landfills still are receiving flood debris a year after the storms, some water experts believe too much might have been cleaned up and could in time hurt the rivers.

The piles of muck-coated possessions of residents hit hardest by the September 2013 floodwaters mostly are gone from view, but every big rain that scours a river channel pries loose more debris.

Shards of metal, splintered wood, fractured drywall, ripped carpet, fence pickets and tattered plastic still can be loosed after a year of being encased in riverbeds somewhere upstream.

More than 1,800 homes were destroyed and more than 28,000 others damaged, according to the Colorado Recovery Office.

"We're about 99 percent done with household debris, but it's still an ongoing cleanup effort," said Dan Gudgel, division manager for Waste Connections, which runs the Erie landfills. "You can still see debris in rivers and streams."

"It's hard to put a good number on the amount of flood debris," Gudgel said, "but I would estimate we've seen 50,000 tons" at the Erie landfills, the epicenter of flood-debris disposal. For Coloradans in love with their state's beauty, the September 2013 floods revealed an uglier side of nature. Trees snapped and stripped clean like toothpicks, broken branches, gnarled roots and heaps of sand, gravel and rock look nasty lodged around a favorite walking trail, swimming hole or backyard.

Yet there is trash, and then there is debris that is a critical piece of river restoration.

"I'm very concerned that we have hauled too much away," said Chris Sturm, the Colorado Water Conservation Board's river-channel expert. He's the coordinator of the interagency Stream Team that's guiding watershed restoration.

"The river is a puzzle that the flood took apart," Sturm said. "If you want to put it back together, the last thing you should do is throw out pieces of the puzzle."

He believes some area landowners and officials might have overreacted and removed too much sediment, wood and rock.

Large woody debris can be removed from the channel but stockpiled nearby, he recommends.

"Let's use that wood and sediment to reshape and restabilize the channels," Sturm said.

In some places, they already have.

Along the St. Vrain Greenway in Longmont, unsightly piles of wood, sand and rock remain at random intervals along the creek banks. It's part of the plan.

"You should keep what you can and reuse it," said Longmont Public Works director Dale Rademacher. "It saves on transportation costs."

It also saves on importing new materials to shore up banks.

Julie McKay, who heads Boulder County's comprehensive creek planning, said some materials — colored rocks that are not native or natural components of local basins — have been brought in by some landowners.

Yet, McKay said, she understands the urgency that private residents and officials felt immediately after the flood to shore up banks and to clear the channels ahead of the spring runoff.

"A lot of county time and resources were spent on hazardous woody debris removal," McKay said. "We were very oriented to what would happen in the spring if we didn't. We've exhaled now. ... Now it's a planning phase."

As to whether it's safe yet to go back in the rivers for recreation, it's a personal choice stream by stream.

Chrystal DeCoster lives in Lyons and has observed how new storm events deliver small reminders of the past devastation. She's also seen disappointed people dragging their punctured inner tubes out of the St. Vrain.

DeCoster's advice: "I wouldn't stick a toe in the water yet."