..Home News .Joint Meeting Between Local Officials and Army Corps Turns Into Verbal Spat
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By Marqise Allen / mallen@chronline.com | 0 comments

It could still be another 20 to 30 years before dams are built on the upper Chehalis River, according to Army Corps of Engineers officials — if they’re built at all.

“I still think there’s a high probability (the Army Corps) will get to the end of this and still say dams don’t meet the cost-benefit ratio,” Lewis County Commissioner Ron Averill said.


Army Corps officials met with members of the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority and the Chehalis Basin Partnership Tuesday to discuss the future of a feasibility study that would look to flood mitigation alternatives outside of the Twin Cities levee project.

The four-hour meeting almost immediately became a contentious war of words between dam supporters and Army Corps officials. Army Corps officials announced that the general investigation study could cost $24 million and take nearly 14½ years to begin construction. Local jurisdictions would be responsible for half the cost. About $8 million is tied to studying and designing the project that would add two earthen dams along the upper Chehalis River.

“Everyone here in the community has said they support a significantly different Corps plan,” said Chehalis City Councilor Chad Taylor. “This as far as the city of Chehalis is concerned is too expensive and too long.”

Lewis County Commissioner Bill Schulte called the plan “unacceptable” and told Army Corps officials “to go back to the drawing board.”

Local officials also balked on the levee project that would add 11 miles of levees in and around the Centralia and Chehalis area. The project is expected to reach 35 percent design phase in September, but many criticized the project Tuesday for being too narrow and not something that would solve flooding outside of the Twin Cities.

“We need to keep in mind that the levee project was something you all wanted in the beginning,” said Mark White, director of natural resources for the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. “I read the newspaper the next day, and everybody was excited.”

Now the flood authority and Chehalis Basin Partnership will have to determine whether it’s something worth continuing. Army Corps officials have given the groups a chance to conduct another feasibility study without the levees in place. Adding the additional study could improve the cost-benefit ratio for dams and other large scale projects.

“It will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to reach that threshold with the Twin Cities Levee Project there,” said Kelly Love, district director for the Office of U.S. Rep. Brian Baird.

However, not doing so would shave $3 million and two years off the estimated timeline.

Flood authority members were also miffed by the fact that their current work and studies they have conducted on water retention may not be credited towards their allotted portion of the cost, due to the plan not yet being officially signed by all parties involved.

“It would require an act of Congress,” said Mona Thomason, chief of the Seattle planning branch for the Army Corps. “There’s a law that prohibits us from crediting them.”

Bill Goss, project manager for the Twin Cities Project, said the Army Corps would continue to look at ways to cut down cost and time.

“This isn’t us dreaming up some scheme,” he said. “We’re trying to work with all the stakeholders.”

But locals are beginning to run out of time and patience.

“We formed a flood authority to solve flooding, and we still don’t have anything. We’re reaching a point of diminishing returns,” Averill said. “We’re desperately in need of showing some concrete measure, and we may have to look elsewhere without the Corps.”