New slough may solve Seal Slough erosion

Citizens, state and local officials and environmental habitat groups think they may have a solution to the continuing flooding and erosion problems along Kandoll Road and Seal Slough.

Engineers from Cardno Entrix, a consultant working for the Columbia Land Trust, said a viable solution seems to be to create a new slough across the old Kandoll Farm to channel the water that surfaces on the farm into the Grays River to the south and away from Seal Slough to the north.

The concept drew nods of approval from several regulatory agencies, and the engineers said they could conduct modeling and expand their calculations to predict the project's chance of success.

Meanwhile, Ian Sinks, habitat manager for the land trust, said he'd meet with the groups that funded the Kandoll project in the first place to see if they would accept the changes.

That work won't be done until 2012.

The land trust purchased the farm and others in the area years ago. In 2005, they removed a tide gate and replaced it with two 14-foot culverts leading directly into Seal Slough. They breached the dike along Grays River to allow the farm to return to wetland status, and they raised Kandoll Road to become a dike which they thought would protect neighboring land owners. Instead, the dike seemed to prevent flood waters from flowing away from neighbors, and the culverts increased the current in Seal Slough to the point that the private diks are starting to sluff into the slough.

Westend residents expressed frustration that a solution may be at least a year away.

"This should have been done before they put it in in the first place," said Raven Webb, whose house has been a flooding victim. She has sold the property to the land trust this year and plans to move from the area.

"We are where we are, and we need to find a solution," said Lisa Marsyla, chair of the county board of commissioners.