Road projects present challenges

Wahkiakum County's slide-prone environment is presenting challenges to local officials.

The dike under Steamboat Slough Road is in imminent danger of sliding into the Columbia River and flooding the Julia Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge for the Columbian White-tailed Deer. The federal government apparently has no money to fortify the shoreline.

Covered Bridge Road experienced a shift that created a ridge across the pavement, and the county apparently doesn't have funds to stablize the hillside where the road is located over the Grays River.

The Elochoman Valley Road experienced a slide last winter at milepost 10.5, and Public Works Director Pete Ringen has been looking for a safe, economical way to remove an unstable rock formation that could come crashing down on the road.

County commissioners ordered the closure of Steamboat Slough Road last week because of safety concerns, and Commissioner Lisa Marsyla said Tuesday those concerns have only grown.

She and Ringen attended a meeting last week of the US Army Corps of Engineers (COE) and US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to hear a presentation from an engineering firm to evalute the problem for USFWS. The dike is on federal land.

"I'm an optimistic person, and it was very depressing," Marsyla said. "There's a huge issue out there. They presented five alternative plans that run from $2.7 million to $4.5 million.

"It's not a matter of if it will go. It's a matter of when it will go. I don't believe there's a chance of us finding any funding."

Ringen explained that the river has deepened in the area, and the riprap that once protected the bank from erosion and held it in place has rolled away. That leaves the bank in danger of collapsing.

"Once it breaks, there's going to be a lot of water on the refuge," he said.

Commissioner Blair Brady commented that bank anglers fishing nearby had reported seeing water percolating to the ground surface behind the dike. He hadn't been able to confirm the observation, he said, but he believed the report.

"That's very bad," Ringen said.

Ringen and Marsyla said a temporary solution would be to construct another dike set far back from the existing dike, but the engineers felt that would be subject to erosion once the existing dike is gone.

Marsyla said she would keep working with federal officials to find funding for the work.

Ringen said it will be a challenge to find funding for stopping the sliding hillside under Covered Bridge Road, which is being eroded by the Grays River.

The road has too little traffic to qualify it for state or federal funds, Ringen said, so the county would have to finance completely a project to stabilize the site, which has a high groundwater content.

"It (the hill) moved slightly," Ringen said. "We'll repair the surface."

Ringen said a contractor has proposed a possible solution to removing the unstable rock poise above the Elochoman Valley Road.

The contractor has suggested using a crane to knock the unstable rock loose, and Ringen has decided to study the idea.

"I had a blasting contractor look at it, and they said they didn't want anything to do with it," he said.