$800,000 fix proposed for downtown flooding- December 3, 1998 By Ryan Teague Beckwith - Daily World Writer, The Aberdeen Daily World
With the late November storms came a familiar headache for Keith Henderson - flooding in the Becker Building. But a new report for the City of Aberdeen may hopefully clear up some of the reasons behind the persistent problem he faces as manager.
That doesn't mean the flooding will stop any time soon, though.
In a report before the City Council Wednesday, a representative from the Bellevue-based Earth Tech engineering firm blamed the problem on poorly designed pipes in the H Street storm water catch basin.
The cost to fix it? About $800,000.
"We know what we need to do," said Mayor Chuck Gurrad. "Now we need to figure out how we can go out and get some money to do it."
The seven-story Becker Building - Aberdeen's tallest structure and one of its most historic - has been plagued by flooding since it was built in 1927. Last January, Mazatlan restaurant moved out of the front of the building, and the space has been empty ever since.
Surface water engineer Richard Schaefer said part of the problem is undersized local drainage pipes in the area near the seven-story building. To make matters worse, he said the study found that one of the pipes slopes uphill as it drains toward the catch basin.
As a first step, he recommended replacing the storm drains and pipes in the alley behind the Becker Building from H Street west to I Street, which the study estimated would cost $108,000.
To fully remedy the flooding problem in the H Street area, he said the city would also need to install a pump station at a cost of $694,000 near the Chehalis River where the tide gates are. During the study, he said engineers rejected the idea of putting the pumps anywhere else.
"It would be throwing money away," he said. "The problem is we have no place to pump the water to."
Riverside pumps would solve one problem the city has when storms hit during high tide. The tide gates, which prevent tidewater from coming into the city, also stop backed-up storm water from flowing out.
"A pump by the river would isolate the tides from the storm system," Schaefer said. Ideally, the city would install pumps large enough to handle major flooding that happens every 10 years or longer.
But he said the storm drains and pipes within the city are already overloaded with the water produced during five-year storms. "There's no sense spending any more money if we can't get the water down there," he said.
Engineers generally consider 4 inches of rain in a 24-hour period to be a five-year storm.
The study also rejected attempting to move excess storm water into nearby catch basins, since problems with small pipes are endemic throughout the city.
But Schaefer said the city might find it more cost-effective to fix more than one area at a time, noting that larger pumps could be installed that way.
The study, which was paid for with a $24,000 grant, focused only on the H Street area, but city officials hope to learn more about the city's storm water system with a comprehensive $320,000 study approved by voters earlier in November.
Still, officials caution that even that study will only enumerate the problems.
Further grant money will still need to be found to pay for any solutions to flooding problems in the rest of the city.