by ALLEN RICHARD CURTIS, Observer correspondent
NORTH COVE: Home-owners in this modest seaside community immediately north of the Peninsula are still watching the ocean claw steadily toward their homes, never mind completion last fall of a nearby $27 million project aimed at saving their only highway.
Funds ran out and an underwater rock dike was shortened by about 1,400 feet, a factor some suggest has compromised the project's potential for larger-scale erosion control. Finishing the dike would cost another $10 million, an engineer estimates.
State Route 105 between Raymond and Westport is threatened by the migrating north channel in the Willapa Bay entrance, a process that has consumed numerous homes, hundreds of acres of land and a federal lighthouse reservation over the course of the last century.
As built, the highway stabilization project includes a 1,600-foot rock groin, an 840-foot underwater rock dike and placement of 350,000 cubic yards of sand for beach nourishment along the 2,000-foot long segment of highway. Direct intervention by political heavyweights including U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., convinced the Federal Highway Administration to provide $24 in emergency relief funds for the Washington Department of Transportation project, which also required a state match of $3 million.
This week, worried residents of North Cove will meet with project engineers and government officials to hear a preliminary assessment of how well the stabilization plan is working. Indications are that some sediment is building or accreting north of the new groin, while more extensive erosion continues elsewhere in the area.
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New The construction milestone is marked by controversy as stormy as that of the Thanksgiving Day storm that kept 66-year-old Joani Templin up all night. The gale-force gusts rocked her North Cove trailer, which is only a couple of miles by beach west of the new groin.
As she stood on the eroding bank in front of her house the next morning, she asked: "What about us? We're retired people. All that money went to save SR 105 and the cranberry bogs. We've watched street after street go. Are they going to relocate us? We pay taxes like everybody else.
"I was waiting for the water to come sloshing over into my yard: we lost about another 10 feet," she said of the waves which are now breaking 20 yards from her front window.
During each of the winter storms, the waves come a bit closer. Three years ago, she had to walk a block and a half to the beach.
"I was scared all night," the petite Templin said as she fought from being blown about in the wind. "I don't think we will last the winter."
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Pacific County Commissioner Pat Hamilton, who has made north county erosion issues part of the foundation of her political career and who fought hard to pull off the stabilization project, is angry for other reasons, one of which is that the underwater dike portion of the project is about 1,400 feet shorter than initially designed.
"The completed project is not what was engineered," Hamilton said. "They (WDOT/FHWA) compromised this project to the point that the engineers pulled their support of it, saying it wasn't going to do the job. If it is not the designed project, who is going to verify how long it is going to stay?"
According to FHWA Division Policy and Quality Engineer Gary Hughes, the reason for the shortened dike was funding, which was based on the project's cost estimate. The estimate was presented by Pacific International Engineering: the consultant hired by Pacific County to design solutions for north county's erosion problems.
"Authority to spend ER (emergency relief) money for this project came as a special provision by an act of Congress," Hughes said. "Congress said in that provision that we could only authorize federal funding for this project in the fiscal year 1996-97, which ended Sept. 30, 1997.
"Had I had a higher number, a different estimate, I would have authorized more dollars prior to Oct. 1, 1997," Hughes continued. "We would have had more money to work with. But after Oct. 1 passed there wasn't authority to spend additional ER funds for this project."
Hamilton said it was her understanding there was still more money on the table and the FHWA did not go for the full amount of funding available.
Hughes said Congress limited the funding to the cost of relocating SR 105, which was estimated to cost about $32 million. He said this is where Hamilton is either misinformed or has a misunderstanding.
"Prior to Oct. 1, 1997, WDOT and FHWA requested from Pacific County's consultant, PIE, a detailed cost estimate to build the 1,600-foot groin and the 2,400-foot underwater dike, which spanned the entire channel," he said. "They furnished us with a detailed cost estimate, a total cost, and based on that I obligated over $23 million for the project."
PIE's manager, Harry Hosey, said he was not privy to what the numbers of dollars were, how they were limited or not limited.
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Hughes said that when the project began, PIE's idea was to plug the north channel with two dikes 1,000 feet apart and back-filled in between. (In a review done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this idea was deemed a navigational hazard.)
The second concept was to go with two dikes, but PIE could not furnish FHWA with information justifying the need for a second dike for the protection of SR 105. He also said that had the second dike remained an option, the $32 million cap would have been exceeded.
Finally, the single 2,400-foot underwater dike design was reached followed by the shortened design. Extensive computer modeling was done of the shorter dike by PIE.
"Hosey was in on the whole process," Hughes said. "Pacific County and the state went to PIE and said, 'This is the amount of money we have left. We need to redesign the dike to fit within this amount of money.'
"PIE felt there was less risk with the longer dike. Hosey was uncomfortable with the shortened dike: it was a risk issue," Hughes continued. "We asked him bluntly, 'Will this work?' We said we aren't going to build it if it won't work. He wouldn't tell us it wouldn't work."
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Hughes said WDOT checked the construction estimates as best they could, but said they were not experienced marine engineers. "That's why we hired PIE," he said. "I don't know of any project where we've dropped stone in 90 feet of water to the tolerances required on this project. We didn't have any bidding experience on a project of this nature. It's a very unique project: it was politically motivated.
"My bottom line is we were charged with the job. Congress gave authority to use funds for a certain purpose. We feel that we fulfilled that purpose and we feel that we did things in the public interest.
"What we did so far is working to protect the roadway, even if it is abbreviated, which brings into question whether we needed a 2,400-foot dike to begin with to protect the roadway."
According to WDOT TRANSAID engineer Bill Pierce, who, when the project began, was the project's plan engineer, it would have cost another $10 million to finish the remainder of the underwater dike.
"They (Quigg Brothers-Schermer, who built Phase Three: the underwater dike) had a heck of a time holding the barge loads of rock in place," Pierce said. "They only had a 15-minute window at each change in the tides when the current was slack enough and they could get the tugs and rock barge into position and get the dump done."
Hughes said at one point PIE assumed the contractors bidding on the underwater dike would use the alternate geo-container construction design (consisting of sand in huge fabric bags) which would have been much less expensive than rock.
"I talked to Tim Quigg," Hughes said. "Tim said that he talked to other bidders on the project as well. He said there was just too much risk involved with going with geo-containers, because you had to drop these engineered, fabric sand-filled containers in 90 feet of water and they were afraid they were going to burst when they hit the bottom."
Erosion continues
Report No. 10 of PIE's monitoring of the project site indicates that wave heights and current speeds have been significantly reduced after the construction of the dike and that the south bank of the north channel within the area affected by the dike is continuing to gradually deepen and widen.
The report indicates that in the north channel hydrographic survey area there was a net accretion of about 19 cubic yards of material per linear foot between Sept. 4 and Oct. 10, 1998, while there was net erosion of about 49 cubic yards of material per linear foot between Oct. 10 and Nov. 18.
In the North Cove topographic survey areas, a net erosion of 14,000 cubic yards was noted. North of the groin, the report said, approximately 5,000 cubic yards of sediment accreted because of the southwest long-shore sediment transport being interrupted by the groin and dike.
"What we have is 11 months of data," Hosey said. "You can't take one report and compare it to anything else without a whole lot of work: to do analysis and comparison and draw partial conclusions. You have to have a good, complete data set.
"Right now our contract requires an interim report that is scheduled some time this month. At the Jan. 14 meeting, we will probably know what will be in the report. The final report is due in June. The purpose of the interim report is to get some sort of sense as to what the report is going to say. There are only three months of data collection to go and we need to make some sort of decision whether we should be collecting data over a longer period of time, whether the story to come out is relatively obvious or what are some of the preliminary conclusions: sort of take a look at what some of the conclusions may be when the full analysis is done. We're doing that right now."
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Pierce said the work through contracts on the project was estimated at $23.2 million and that approximately $21.6 million has been spent.
He said an additional $2.5 million went to PIE in design costs, while another $61,000 went to WDFW for monitoring.
Also, $1.5 million is being held back for mitigation on impacts to salmon, the snowy plover, the brown pelican and crab.
"Through mitigation, they were able to draw off enough funding to make it too expensive to proceed," Hamilton said of the project and the shortened dike. "The bottom line is, if you want to get a project through, you have all these loopholes, those things to jump through, and the (regulating) agency will give a permit to you if you give them enough money for mitigation.
"You have to get enough money for the project and enough money to pay them to give you the permit to go through with it. A project's success or lack of success is predicated on how much money they get for mitigation."
Pierce said WDOT has had to enter a 10-year monitoring and mitigation agreement with federal and state resource agencies: National Marine Fisheries, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Ecology, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington Fish and Wildlife Department and Washington Parks Department: to build the stabilization project.
After a meeting last week with PIE and the resource agencies to discuss mitigation, Pierce said there is concern among the resource agencies about fish passage around the groin. "The other issue we had, crab mitigation, we're going to enter into an agreement to give WDFW about $4,000 based on the crab that we squished during the construction.," he said. "The snowy plover and the brown pelican are a non-issue at this time. They gave a report on what their monitoring results found, which was kind of a baseline condition and there wasn't any indication that our project had bothered either species at all. The resource agencies are still concerned about the projects."
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Hughes said they did their best to get the project built. "The resource agencies were absolutely opposed to the project and we had to get beau coup permits to get it built," he said. "We spent a great deal of time with the resource agencies to come up with a plan and not harm the environment and to mitigate any future impacts.
"In fact, we implemented a new concept in regard to dealing with environmental impacts relating to a transportation project. We've adopted what's called an 'adaptive management approach.'
"The adaptive management concept is that seeing we couldn't predict or model what the impact of the groin and dike are going to be in Willapa Bay and the impact to certain endangered species in Willapa Bay, we agreed to enter into a monitoring and mitigation plan with the resource agencies.
"We have a requirement with the resource agencies that we monitor both physical and biological impacts within Willapa Bay for 10 years and we have to see if impacts we might identify are related to our project. If they are, then we have to do certain forms of mitigation."
Hughes said in a worst-case scenario, WDOT's costs to mitigate and monitor during that 10-year period could be as high as $5 million.
"As I understand, we have about a $1.5 balance in funds that would be available for WDOT to use for monitoring and mitigation in the next 10 years and there is no money beyond that," he said.
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Regarding the plight of North Cove, Hamilton said its residents should feel left out. "We have the main project right there," she said. "Nobody has brought that kind of money home to do anything."
Her issue is with the Washington Coastal Erosion Task Force, a diverse 40-member group, spearheaded by Washington's Department of Trade and Economic Development, and comprised of people from local and tribal communities, local governments, state and federal agencies, the League of Women Voters, port commissioners, Chamber of Commerce members, fishermen and crabbers, and surf riders.
The task force's mission is to draft recommendations to guide the state's Legislature and governor on how to aid southwestern Washington with their erosion problem.
Hamilton said that the task force is too busy trying to figure out the life span of a sewer system so they can get everything off of the beach rather than looking for funding to deal with the erosion issues.
"Gordon White (program manager for DOE's Shoreland and Environmental Assistance) was at the same meeting I was," Hamilton said, "and I said, 'Let's deal with the real issues. Let's pay these people off and let them move on with their lives rather than making them pay for it.
"He was the person who made the statement publicly that he wasn't prepared to do that and I basically said, 'Well, if you aren't prepared to find solutions, what are we doing here?' Their solution is, if you wait long enough, it will all go away."
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New White's alternate on the council, Terry Swanson, said the group may have gotten off to a slow start, but, speaking for DOE: and she felt she could speak for the other state agencies, she said the task force is seeking solutions.
"It's a large group with the mission to work out long-term strategies to deal with erosion," she said. "It certainly is not within the purview of the task force to make specific recommendations on funding except that local and tribal groups will need funding to carry out some of their solutions."
Swanson said they are all dealing with the erosion issue. "It's a massive issue," she said. "If somebody's house is going to slide in, who pays for it: public or private? What do the laws say? Are they even clear? Are there any regulations? Is there any policy?: we don't even have any policy on this stuff. Then you get to where there is a slew of approaches: set-backs, buy-offs, no action, hard structures, beach nourishment, jetties, etc."
Swanson also said the task force has discussed funding, but there have not been any conclusions. There are concerns that the funding should be spent appropriately and there needs to be a long-term strategy developed to determine where it should go and how to best spend it.
"There are also fears from some members that dollars in the past might not have been put to either projects or plans that ended up helping solve the erosion problem," she said.
Swanson said that a draft report from the council should be out this next week, but she couldn't say exactly what it will contain. She said it will generally be supporting funding and studies, while trying to take a look at making better policy governing when to allow hard structures and when not to.
"We're hoping for a consensus on the document," she said, "but I'm not sure how we are going to end up. We hope the task force will make some recommendation that all levels of government and citizens can evaluate and adopt accordingly, whether it is going to be an ordinance or regulation, or part of a plan."
According to Swanson, there is a $1 million funding request in the governor's budget to spend on coastal erosion issues, either for studies or projects. The communities will have to go through a competitive process to get the funds, though.
Back to top or back to home page or back to Whats New Commissioner Hamilton said that the local coastal erosion task force from Westport, Ocean Shores, Grays Harbor and Pacific counties is still a cohesive group. She said it was this alliance that brought in the extra horsepower to lobby U.S. Rep. Dicks and the state congressional delegation to help Pacific County and press for the appropriation of emergency funds through the Department of Transportation for the SR 105 Stabilization Project.
"As a group, we are still functioning and working together to try to mutually support all those processes," she said. "We're under contract, put so much money into it, to keep our consultant."
Hamilton said the $25 million stabilization project brought back $180,000 to the county in the county's portion of state sales tax from the project: this on a $40,000 investment of county funds. She said it wasn't too hard to talk the other two commissioners into spending the necessary $10,000 in dues to maintain the local coastal erosion group's status.
"We are a solid unit," she said. "And now when we lobby the Legislature, the governor, the congressional delegation, we're still a unit."
Hamilton said restarting construction of the dike would be very expensive and the county needs to look at other solutions to the highway and North Cove erosion problems.
"Maybe it's an opportunity to get the center channel dredged to the point it would relieve some of the pressure on the north channel," she said. "We've already sought federal funding. It just a matter of getting that in place.
"You know of course the county was the lead on the erosion project and the port (of Willapa) is the lead of the center channel project. So we just have to go in a full lobbying effort to try and get money to get the Center Channel dredged. That's one option. We still have to have that meeting, so I can't say what else is being suggested.
"I'm not giving up. The bottom line is I am very aware this project is not done and it has become a personal thing with me at this point, because we did everything we could to get the project done. I'm darn well going to see that the project is completed. If it takes me the rest of my four years, by golly, that's exactly what I'll give it."
'What about us?'
Not what was engineered
The design changed
'Politically motivated'
Wildlife mitigation expense
Agencies opposed project
Commissioner defends residents
State looking for long-term strategies
Local task force still in place
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