Bob Bozarth wrote a letter to the editor sharing his view that the proposed flood retention dam above Pe Ell would be too expensive at $500 million.
I’ve known Bob forever. I like him and I respect the fact that he’s obviously done a good deal of homework on this, but I disagree. We don’t yet have a final price tag on the dam. We don’t know if it will end up costing $500 million but, as of today, that’s a reasonable estimate. In any case Bob is right, it will be tremendously expensive.
What I do know is that the flood of 2007 alone caused more than $900 million in damage to families, communities, schools, churches, businesses and commerce by the closing of Interstate 5, two state highways and the BNSF rail line. Add on the losses from the floods of 1990 and 1996, and you see quickly why the dam, expensive as it is, passes the Army Corps and the state’s tight cost-benefit tests for flood projects.
The best estimate is that $3.5 billion will be lost due to flood damage in the Chehalis basin over the next 100 years if we do nothing. And here’s something more scary. The $3.5 billion estimate assumes no increase in future flood volumes. It assumes the current FEMA “100 year flood level” remains where it is today. Except that FEMA’s calculated “100 year flood level” has gone up 30 percent here since 1986 because the five largest flows of record in the last century have occurred since 1986.
If these catastrophic flood levels keep rising the economic damage will be much higher than $3.5 billion over the next century.
And everybody who lived through these huge floods knows that the economic loss is only a part of the damage that is done to families and the future of our communities.
If you look at the aerial map of Centralia with the 2007 flood overlaid you will see that had the dam been in place then about 20 percent of the Centralia homes and businesses that did flood would not have flooded.
Washington elementary flooded but would have stayed dry. The high school was surrounded by water in 2007 but would not have been if the dam had been in place. Instead of I-5 overtopped for 5 days it would have been less than 22 hours.
Bob is right to point out that even with water retention on the main stem of the Chehalis, we will still have big floods. It will not eliminate all flood damage.
So, is the dam worth it? So far, I believe the clear answer is “yes.”
J. Vander Stoep
Chehalis
