The Chronicle editorial, 9/23/2002
A tour last week of the levees, or dikes, that protect areas of the Twin Cities revealed some ongoing concerns about maintenance of the flood-protecfion structures that should be addressed with any new levees constructed for the area.
Officials of Lewis County and Centralia and Chehalis led U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control experts on an examination of the existing levees. They heard from Centralia Community Development Director Terry Calkins, a very knowledgeable and veteran observer of local flooding, something that should very much have caught their attention.
Calkins pointed out the city is regularly contending with keeping its levees along the Skookumchuck River, for example, free of brush, a task that is sometimes made more difficult by neighboring property owners. As Calkins pointed out, if the brush is left to grow, its roots can weaken the structure of the rock and soil levees, which could result in their failure when under the pressure of flood waters, with devastating results.
Further, brush interferes with periodic surveillance of the levees by inspectors for any weaknesses.
The maintenance problem is made more difficult and complicated by the fact levees and other flood-control structures are located in a mishmash of public and private ownership, with maintenance responsibility unclear or even disputed. For example, even now, even though the levee protecting the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds has existed for decades, there's apparently still uncertainty about who is responsible for mowing it to keep the brush down.
The obvious message from all this is that if new levees are constructed in the Twin Cities as proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency should ensure some of these problems are avoided or lessened.
New levees would cost a bundle of taxpayer money. Proper maintenance of them would be essential to ensure that they provide the utmost possible protection in times of high water. If levees fail, the cost to the public can be astronomical, as occurred with the Chehalis system flooding in the Twin Cities in January 1990 and February 1996.
There should be absolute clarity on maintenance responsibility so that the job gets done. That's the bottom line.
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