For as dry as Colorado can be, Denver has always faced the occasional threat of enormous floods.

They’ve shaped the city’s very infrastructure, spurring us to build dams and underground drainage systems large enough to drive trucks through.

In Denver’s Montbello neighborhood, flood control means a system of open-air channels meant to usher water away from homes — but they haven’t always worked.

“I remember, this happened years ago, but every time it would rain a lot, this would get flooded with water,” lifelong resident Brian Quinonez told us on a recent Saturday, standing in his driveway.

He lives less than a block from one of Montbello’s drainage channels, and he’s been there long enough to see floodwaters rise over its edge.

“We have videos of us riding things in the water and we t

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