Staff and members of the Chehalis River Flood Basin Control Zone District tour the site of the proposed dam on the Chehalis River near Pe Ell in late 2017.
Acting in the role of district supervisors, Lewis County Commissioners Edna Fund and Bobby Jackson signed off on a proposed 2020 budget for the Chehalis River Basin Flood Control Zone District during a Tuesday meeting at the Historic Courthouse.
The nearly $1 million budget addresses multiple professional engineering and accounting service commitments, along with an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) report on the potential construction of a dam intended to prevent flooding in the upper reaches of the Chehalis Basin, near Pe Ell.
Lewis County Manager Erik Martin, who serves as the administrator of the Chehalis River Basin Flood Control Zone District, reported Tuesday that $635,656 would be distributed among Gordon, Thomas, Honeywell governmental consulting service, Perteet Engineering and administration staff, among other professional costs dedicated to the Chehalis River Flood Reduction Project.
A total of $322,000 is earmarked for additional staff engineering and accounting expenses, along with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit fees associated with the drafting of an EIS that, as Martin noted, will consist of a comprehensive review of the project.
The flood control zone district is the sponsor of the proposed dam project.
“They’re kind of working independently and purposefully because they want to have what’s sort of a pristine, pure process that’s not influenced by someone who wants something like us,” explained Martin shortly after the budget’s formal approval. “We want to build a project and they want to do their review objectively … We get limited involvement in that, but we pay them a bunch of money to do it.”
The Chehalis Basin Flood Control Zone is the sponsor of the proposed dam project.
The funding will also ensure that the Army Corps assign dedicated staff to examine the undertaking, which can considerably accelerate the process.
A separate EIS — which isn’t part of the district budget — is being drafted by the Department of Ecology, as indicated by Martin during the Oct. 28 annual pre-flood preparation meeting at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis.
In addition to building the water retention facility, the Chehalis River Flood Reduction Project will reportedly look to bolster the levee around the Chehalis-Centralia Airport.
In the Oct. 28 session, Martin said that the proposed water retention dam structure will be equipped with an available flood storage capacity of 65,000 acre-feet at completion.
Prior to the Army Corps’ current analysis of the project, Martin submitted a required project purpose and need letter to the federal agency.
In the Nov. 30, 2018 communication, he stated: “The objective of the retention project is to reduce peak flood levels during a 100-year flood or greater from Pe Ell to Centralia for the protection of families, schools, businesses, churches, farms, industry and major federal, state and local infrastructure. This goal is in line with the goal of the Chehalis Basin Strategy to significantly reduce flood damages across a larger geographic area.”
The document goes on to claim that the dam will reduce the severity and duration from “periodic catastrophic” flooding triggered by rainfall draining from the Willapa Hills, but it is not intended to address flooding in all parts of the basin or tributaries. In fact, it concludes that “no single project can achieve that effect.”
In the course of Monday’s conference, Martin responded to County Commissioner Bobby Jackson’s concern about the controversial Initiative 976 — which intends to reduce car tabs to $30, cutting transportation funding across the state — and any possible impact if could have on the project.
“I can’t say what the state legislature intends to do with their funding. All of our funds come from different pots of money within the state if this holds. I can’t say it won’t affect us, but if it did, it would be indirectly,” said Martin.
In tackling Jackson’s follow-up inquiry on whether the dam in question would use hydropower generation, Martin replied that there are no plans for a hydropower dam.
