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When the Rains Come
If you live in Dayton’s lower elevations, and you don’t own a boat, then our feature story this month should be of special interest. The chance that your home will be underwater during the next flood is unlikely. But that’s only because of the levee that was built along the river many years ago.
This levee is an artificial barrier that needs to be inspected and maintained, much like the roof on your house. When the rains come, both will be put to the test.
Most of us take our roofs and our levee for granted most of the time. The levee in Dayton has become a public park – a great place to take a walk or go for a run. And, because it was built so close to the river, it’s now home to the trees and other vegetation that make the Touchet River habitable for fish.
The levee was originally constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and it’s the Corps that is responsible for assuring the health and integrity of this “engineered structure”, as they call it. It’s also the Corps that will take a big chunk of the blame if we have a flood and the levee fails.
So it’s understandable that the Corps is being pretty hard-nosed about its requirement that vegetation be removed from the levee. If it’s not, we face having the levee “decertified”. And if the levee is decertified, mortgage and insurance companies will pretend it’s not there, and treat homeowners behind it accordingly. (There’s a lot more about all of this in our feature story.)
When the levee was built, the health of fish in the river wasn’t a consideration. The town was already there, and the levee was tucked in between the town and the river, using the standards that were accepted at the time. But we now know that removing all vegetation, as the Corps is requiring, will likely have a devastating effect on the fish habitat in the river in Dayton. In fact, it would probably put Dayton in violation of federal environmental regulations.
Standards change, and even though the people at the Corps who are now responsible for assuring the levee’s safety weren’t there when it was built, we still believe that the Corps bears some responsibility for the situation we now face.
When the world discovered that asbestos caused significant health problems, the companies that manufactured asbestos had to take a lot of the responsibility, even though when they were making the stuff it was considered a safe and acceptable building material.
If a commonly used medication is suddenly found to have unacceptable side-effects after long-term use, the companies that make that drug are expected to take responsibility for the harm it causes, even if the government had originally okayed its use.
The levee in Dayton has been found to have serious negative side-effects that weren’t foreseen at the time it was constructed. The fact is that the levee was designed and built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. For the Corps to now say that the levee must be maintained using the standards of the mid-twentieth century when it was built, and that the harm caused to the fish habitat isn’t their problem, is not enough.
The Corps has been represented in the levee working group that has met monthly in Dayton since the beginning of 2009. Their participation is important, and we applaud the Corps and the rest of the participants for all their efforts to address a very difficult problem.
We understand that protecting people and homes has to be the highest priority. However, we’re sure that there must be twenty-first century methods out there that can allow the integrity of the levee to be maintained without wrecking the fish habitat. If there’s any entity that has the expertise and resources to bring to the table to address the “rocks” and “hard places” now confronting Dayton and Columbia County, it’s the Corps of Engineers. We hope they’ll bring it.