Yellow Pages
MOUNT VERNON — If locals learned anything at a Monday presentation by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it’s that there will be no easy solutions to the Skagit Valley’s flood problems.
About 80 community leaders and interested residents packed a meeting room at Skagit Public Utility District headquarters to hear the first substantive discussion by the corps of what flood-control projects may or may not work for the Skagit River.
The presentation detailed 38 proposed measures, from Ross Lake to Fir Island. Where possible, presenter and corps Planning Chief Linda Smith offered crude cost-benefit analyses of the proposals.
N o c l e a r- c u t w i n n e r s emerged.
“Levees, ring dikes, (levee) setbacks, bypasses all have a lot of possibilities — maybe (additional storage behind) Upper Baker Dam,” Smith said in an interview after her 90-minute presentation.
But each is saddled with limitations. Making extra room for storage of floodwaters behind the Upper Baker Dam and halting flow through the dam would keep less than 5 percent of the water out of a major flood.
“It sweetens other measures, but on its own it doesn’t provide a tremendous amount of flood control,” Smith said.
The proposed measures also include ring dikes to shore up Burlington, Mount Vernon, Sedro-Woolley, La Conner and even Clear Lake. Burlington already has begun investigating construction of a ring dike, ahead of the corps’ timetable.
A ring dike is a smallscale dike to keep floodwaters out of a localized area.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, however, the corps has a “philosophical issue” with ring dikes, Smith said.
“It’s a life safety issue,” she said. If a ring dike failed, would residents become isolated and difficult to rescue?
Ring dikes, Smith said, “would require a very good evacuation system.”
Setback levees can be effective because they reduce flood heights and slow river velocities. But they create more flooding downstream and cost a lot of money, primarily because local governments must acquire large tracts of real estate to build them.
One option for a setback levee could mean the demise of rural Riverbend, west of Mount Vernon.
The corps’ policy is not to encourage development in the floodplain, so it will not upgrade levees that protect undeveloped, low-lying areas, Smith said.
A new levee for that stretch of the Skagit River likely would be built along Interstate 5, where the rural and urban areas meet. And if that levee gets built, it would make rural landowners in Riverbend even more vulnerable to flooding, and the corps would be obligated to relocate them, Smith said.
“If you’re concerned we’ll remove your levee, well, it won’t matter because you won’t be there,” Smith said in an interview.
As director of operations for Dike District 17, Daryl Hamburg is charged with protecting Riverbend. He said after the meeting that this was the first he’d heard of the corps’ policy on levees protecting rural land in the floodplain.
“Until I meet with the corps, I can’t make a comment,” Hamburg said. “That was new to me.”
Jason Easton, a member of the Skagit County Flood Control Zone District Advisory Committee, said he appreciated the corps’ effort and willingness to share information, but he also saw the task ahead as daunting. The advisory committee hosted the corps’ presentation at its third-ever meeting.
“We don’t have a track record of building a lot of projects yet,” Easton said. “I just want to get to the place where we’re protecting people and their livelihoods.
“What gets lost in the complexity is the actual getting things done,” he said. “That’s what concerns me.”
Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or . com.
