Log In


Reset Password
News Education Local News Nation & World New Mexico

Rocks end flowers vs. weeds debate at busy intersection

Stone beats weeds and wildflowers at U.S. 550/160 intersection

Were they weeds or wildflowers? Either way, it doesn’t matter now, because they’re gone – replaced with river rock.

The city of Durango and the Colorado Department of Transportation uprooted vegetation growing in raised medians at U.S. Highway 550/160 near the DoubleTree Hotel and replaced it with fist-sized river rock.

No trees, no bushes – just stones.

“Is it the nicest intersection in the state? Maybe not,” said Levi Lloyd, director of city operations. “But I think it probably looks a lot better than it did with the weeds in there.”

CDOT planned to maintain the medians with a wildflower mixture, but the greenery quickly was overtaken by weeds. Residents complained to the city, apparently unaware CDOT oversees the medians, Lloyd said.

“The city received quite a few complaints about how they looked because of the weeds and stuff that had grown in there,” Lloyd said.

So the city approached CDOT to discuss options, which included capping the medians with stamped concrete, Lloyd said. But doing so would have come at a considerable cost, he said, and CDOT was concerned about water runoff.

“We looked at a lot of different options,” Lloyd said. “We kind of came to an agreement that we would do this washed river rock.”

The agencies agreed to share the cost, with the city paying about $2,500 for a weed barrier and rocks, and CDOT installing the materials over the course of five nights, April 30 through May 4.

The intersection has received significant attention from Durango-area residents during the past few years, most notably for the Arc of History, a $28,000 public art sculpture installed in August 2014 that received mixed reviews and has been vandalized.

With an average of 45,000 traffic movements per day during the summer, it is the busiest intersection on the Western Slope. To alleviate congestion, CDOT spent $6.69 million in 2014 converting the T-shaped intersection into a “continuous-flow intersection,” which essentially eliminated a left-turn signal by moving it south.

With the convergence of U.S. highways 160 and 550, the intersection acts as a gateway to Durango. In fact, the city of Durango has its “Welcome to historic Durango” sign at the crossroads.

It makes sense, therefore, to spruce it up and make it look as nice as possible, said Durango resident Meredith Mallett, who inquired about the weeds last summer in a question to Action Line, a weekly column that runs Mondays in The Durango Herald.

“That’s too bad,” Mallett said upon learning the wildflowers had been replaced by river rock. “It would be really nice if it was a very nice, well-maintained seasonal kind of garden.”

But the raised medians don’t have much room for workers or equipment. Which means lanes of traffic at the busy intersection would be closed periodically to do work, Lloyd said.

Unlike the island that holds the Arc of History, which is irrigated and has trees and is maintained by the city of Durango, the planters don’t have irrigation, said Lisa Schwantes, CDOT spokeswoman.

“There was too high of risk of pipes freezing and breaking with the way those medians are built,” she said. “Laying water pipe to those would have been a disaster with water breakage, freezing and sheeting right there on the intersection.”

What’s more, CDOT isn’t in the business of installing and maintaining landscaping, she said.

Durango City Councilor Sweetie Marbury said the medians look much better with river rock than they did with “nasty, creepy” weeds growing among the wildflowers. As an avid gardener, the weeds were a distraction, she said.

“I was appalled at the nasty weeds that were growing in that median,” she said. “It’s cleaner looking, it’s smoother, it doesn’t distract me in my driving.”

shane@durangoherald.com

May 23, 2016
Colorado native visiting all 59 national parks in 59 weeks
Jul 5, 2015
Wildflower, weed debate meets happy median


Reader Comments