Islanders hear dike maintenance concerns

Puget Island residents are going to have to clear large vegetation away from perimeter dikes, but not for a while, they learned Tuesday.

Commissioners of Consolidated Diking District No. 1, Gordon Oman, Philip Vik and Mike Phelan, called cthe mmunity meeting to explain ramifications of new maintenance enforcement policies by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Diking Commission Chair Oman said trees and large shrubs have been prohibited on dikes for many years because their roots can become channels for water and weaken or erode dikes. The Corps inspects the dikes annually, and in the past, inspectors seemed to ignore trees growing where there was much fill or other material between the dike and river.

"We have an echelon of new people doing the inspections now, and they're going strictly by the book," Oman said. The stricter enforcement policies stem from the failure of dikes at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Oman said.

Last fall, inspectors gave the Island dikes an unsatisfactory rating in two places, one on Little Island and the other on the big island. Oman declined to identify specific locations.

The diking district has two years to rectify the situation.

The diking commissioners said they haven't yet planned how they'll address the situation.

"We'd like to give the property owners the chance of taking out themselves the trees they want to save," Oman said.

At this point, the commissioners said, they're planning to look no further than 15 feet beyond the toe of the dike or to the edge of the right of way. At some point, either the Corps or diking district will identify trees and shrubs that must be removed, and if the property owner won't or can't do it, the diking district will hire a professional tree faller to do the work.

Oman added that there are two definitions to which the Corps is addressing: One is simply 15 feet from the toe of the dike; the other is the extent of the dike right of way, which, from the center line of the road, stretches 25 feet toward the water and 75 feet toward the interior.

"Personally, I think that's a lot of overkill by the Corps, but as a diking district, we have to maintain dikes to their standards," Oman said.

Vik commented that diking district personnel wouldn't go off the right of way and enter people's private property.

Diking commissioners said they would continue discussing the situation with Corps officials. County Commissioner Lisa Marsyla said she would raise the issue with her contacts in the Corps, and several citizens requested another meeting when the diking commission had a better idea of how the program would proceed.

"In the meantime, cut blackberries, but as for trees and shrubs, at some point you'll get back to us," commented West Birnie Slough Road resident Rob Stockhouse.

"Yes," Oman replied.