Posted on April 1, 2019
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials are still trying to shake loose money to survey the Cowlitz River this summer, but county officials are getting increasingly antsy about the delay.
“We’re flying blind because we do not know what the flood protection levels are” in Castle Rock, Lexington, Longview and Kelso, Axel Swanson, county chief of staff, said in a phone interview Thursday.
A river survey measures the depth and configuration of the river at multiple locations to determine whether silt and gravel from Mount St. Helens is clogging the river channel and boosting the chances of flooding.
The corps’ Portland District, which is responsible for lower Cowlitz River flood protection under 1985 federal legislation, did not get the $300,000 it requested to survey the river this spring. It would have been the first time in four years the river has been measured.
Kerry Solan, spokeswoman for the Portland District, said by email Wednesday the corps is seeking to “reprogram” money in its budget in hopes of doing the river survey this summer.
“We are not definitively saying there will be a survey; we are working through the process to re-program funds, and cannot speculate on whether that will actually occur,” Solan said by email. The timing is worrisome to county officials because there would not be much time to mobilize a dredging operation before winter if the survey showed severely diminished flood protection levels.
County officials are planning a meeting in May with all the stakeholders with an interest in the river, including state fish and wildlife officials, in the hopes of identifying dredge spoil disposal locations just to have them available should quick action be needed. Under the 1985 legislation, the county is obligated to provide dredge spoil sites for corps dredging related to flood control.
“We’re trying to get ahead of the situation locally. … If monitoring comes back and we need to act immediately we will be ready to do that,” Swanson said.
However, even with spoil sites identified, it might take time to mobilize a dredging effort because the window for doing so is limited by the need to protect endangered salmon and steelhead runs.
“We will see what the monitoring tells us, and then look at our options at that point,” Solan said in her email.
County officials have been pressuring the corps and state’s congressional delegation since last summer for some action. Commissioner Joe Gardner brought up the matter two weeks ago, during a visit to the Washington, D.C., offices of Southwest Washington Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler.
“I communicated to her that the county is still frustrated that there are no dollars in the budget for continued (river) monitoring. She thought that it had happened. She seemed surprised that it hadn’t and said she would follow up with the corps,” Gardner said Thursday.
The Corps Portland District has always been supportive of Cowlitz County’s concerns with the Cowlitz, and the agency has spent hundreds of millions of dollars addressing volcano-related flooding threats. Last fall saw the completion of a long-awaited plan to address the continued flow of silt out from the Toutle Valley. It calls for raising the Toutle River sediment-retaining dam another 23 feet, building other silt-retaining structures upstream of the dam and dredging the Cowlitz as necessary. It also will build a new fish trap below the dam.
However, some of those actions will depend on the condition of the Cowlitz channel, and that’s why officials here are tired of waiting.
“We can’t get the corps to fulfill its obligation (to assure) flood protection levels” mandated by the 1985 law, Swanson said. “It is starting to get beyond frustration. We can’t go another year without knowing our flood protection levels. I’m hoping that they can get this money in place in the next month or so.”
No survey has been taken of the Cowlitz since 2015. Most rivers do not need checking that often, but the riverbed of the Cowlitz is constantly changing due to the flow of Mount St. Helens debris that pours down the Toutle River.
When the river was last assessed in mid-decade, annual flood odds were calculated at about 1 in 235 in Castle Rock; 1 in 250 in Lexington; and 1 in 500 in Kelso and Longview. Those are lower flood risks than many river communities face, but hydrologists and engineers warn that a single, major storm could drop heaps of volcanic debris in the river and boost those odds suddenly. And no one knows what a major December 2015 storm did to the river, Swanson said.
“For some reason we can’t get much traction on this issue,” Gardner said, “We’re making sure we continue to ring the bell on this issue and not be forgotten about.”
Source: tdn.com
