Chehalis River Council position letter on flooding summit

March 1, 1999

Col. James M. Rigsby Commander U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Seattle District P.O. Box 3755 Seattle, Washington 98124-3755

Board of Trustees: David Palmer, chair Brenda Boardman Brady Engvall Merrily Knutsen Lew Patton Margaret Rader

Dear Colonel Rigsby:

I am writing on behalf of the board of trustees of the Chehalis River Council, a non-profit citizens' organization working on behalf of clean water in the greater Chehalis Basin. As I'm sure you are aware, the Chehalis Basin reaches from the headwaters of the Chehalis River near Pe Ell down to Grays Harbor. The Basin covers large areas in Lewis, Thurston, and Grays Harbor counties and smaller sections of Pacific and Mason counties.

In a Centralia/Chehalis Chronicle article of February 26, 1999, we read of a planned "summit" to resolve controversy that currently surrounds the proposed Lewis County Flood Control project. We have been following plans for flood control in Lewis County for several years and have been increasingly concerned, both about the process and what seems to be the project favored by Lewis County. The Chronicle article suggests that citizens have generally responded favorably to the plan presented in a recent series of public meetings.

We want you to be aware that not all citizens in the Basin are in favor of the project outlined by Pacific International Engineering. Members of our organization have attended several of the public meetings and would characterize the public reaction as "cautious skepticism."

Of course citizens want something done about flooding in the Centralia/Chehalis area. I believe many are much less sure that the PIE plan is credible or feasible. (After all, only a few years ago PIE told Lewis County that the only thing that would control flooding was several dams on the Upper Chehalis.) And particularly those outside of the Centralia/Chehalis area must be convinced that whatever is done to control flooding in the Centralia/Chehalis area will not worsen flooding downstream. PIE's reports of the results of its flood model have attempted to reassure downstreamers, but we are not yet convinced.

Here are several points that we believe must be stressed at any "summit."

• Environmental concerns must not be pushed aside or relegated to the formal Environmental Impact Statement process. They should have entered into the planning long before this. Lewis County Commissioner Richard Graham is on record as saying that [state] officials don't seem interested in solving local flooding, focusing instead on elaborate environmental reviews. There must be a recognition by all parties that "elaborate environmental reviews" are the law of the land and must not be foreshortened in any way for a project with so much potential impact beyond the Lewis County flood project boundaries.
• There must be a recognition that there is no way that the taxpayers will support Lewis County going it alone, i.e., "moving forward with or without (state officials)" (Commissioner Graham as quoted in the Feb. 26 Chronicle article).
• The project designed by Pacific International Engineering must be submitted to an agreed-upon engineering firm or organization for peer review. Most citizens do not have the expertise to evaluate this proposal but want to be sure that most experts agree that it will indeed work.
• If the current proposal is accepted, safety, maintenance, and operational considerations of use of the Skookumchuck dam for flood control must receive minute and extensive scrutiny. Thurston County (where the dam actually is sited) must be more involved in this aspect of the plan than they have been.
• All participants must agree to a "watershed" approach, with a generally agreed-upon definition of what that means. A piece-meal approach to flooding in the Chehalis Basin will in the long run prove ineffective. Currently, the flooding problems in the Rochester/Independence Valley/Oakville areas (just downstream from the Centralia/Chehalis project area) appear to be worsening. At a minimum, the whole basin must be modeled and the effects of any proposed flood control project thoroughly explored.
• The public must be involved, both in the "summit" and in the resulting process. (Public meetings on this plan only began in December of 1998.) It would be appropriate for our organization to be at the summit as an environmental group that has worked on water issues in the Basin since 1992. The Chehalis Tribe must be involved. The Quinault Tribe, because of its historic interest in the lower Chehalis, must be consulted.
• Freeing up more land for development within the historic floodplain in Lewis County and Chehalis and Centralia must not be one of the goals (stated or unstated) of the flood control project. The development that was permitted in the floodplain in the past is one of the major reasons that flooding impacts are worsening.
• There must be a recognition that flooding cannot be "controlled" in the Chehalis Basin and can only be mitigated. Nature created the Centralia/Chehalis area to flood or fill up its extensive wetlands, as is proved by elevations, soils, precipitation records, and historical accounts. Any flood plan must work with Nature, not against her.

We see some promise in the Corps of Engineers doing a feasibility study, especially if it will result in consideration of alternatives to the current proposal and begin the process of environmental review. The public needs to know about what is happening with this project. They need to understand the concerns of the state agencies, and where planners think the money is coming from. The long and expensive lobbying process headed by PIE seems to have had little results, and the unavailability of Department of Transportation money for flood control should have been predictable. The process needs to be more in the public eye, and currently it seems likely that Corps oversight may provide that kind of review.

The Chehalis River Council stands ready to participate, as representatives of the public and of the environmental community in the Chehalis Basin, in this process. Please let us know if we can help.

Sincerely,

Dave Palmer
on behalf of the Board of Trustees
Chehalis River Council

cc:

Senator Slade Gorton
Senator Patty Murray
Representative Brian Baird
Representative Norm Dicks
Grays Harbor County Commissioner Robert Beerbower
Lewis County Commissioner Richard Graham
Thurston County Commissioner Kevin O'Sullivan
Director of Natural Resources Dr. C.J. Sodhi, Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis
Director Tom Fitzsimmons, Department of Ecology
Director of Environmental Services Jerry Alb, Department of Transportation
Regional Director Sue Mauermann, DOE
Project Manager Forest Brooks, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Shorelands & Environmental Assistance Programs Manager Gordon White, DOE
Grays Harbor County Engineer Mike Daniels

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