By Matt Hufman, Daily World writer, 1/29/1998
Trying to predict which way the Chehalis River will flow next, the Grays Harbor County Commissioners approved spending approximately $102,000 on a study that will chart the bottom of the river.
In Monday's commission meeting, the commissioners approved taking $54,752 out of the general fund to pay for the study.
A consultant will map the bottom of the river at various points to give county officials a feel of what's happening with the river and where it is going. That should help officials determine how to protect the county's four bridges that cross the river and other areas along the river.
Full picture
Mike Daniels, the county public services director, said officials will hopefully "get a full picture of what the basin is doing from Oakville to Montesano" and then "try to find solutions" to erosion problems.
"Without that information, it's going to become impossible to determine what will happen downstream," Daniels said.
This is a cooperative with Lewis County, which has already hired a consultant - Pacific International Engineers, which is doing much of the erosion studies along the coast - and started the study. PIE will continue to work farther down stream into Grays Harbor.
The rest of the cost of study will come out of the road fund as the study will go to determine erosion and the position of the river around the county's four bridges that cross the Chehalis.
Detailed cross sections
Daniels said it is expected that there will be 70 cross sections of the river done. That's expected to be more detailed than the current cross sections which are old, Daniels said. Those, done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, were taken every mile. The county's study will cluster more on "problem" spots, Daniels said.
He said that information should help determine much of where the problems are and where they are coming from. After doing this study, the county will have a "baseline" of information about the river.
"We continue to get requests by people who live in the valley from Oakville to Aberdeen about things in the watershed that affect them, and we don't have any baseline information," Daniels said.