The Associated Press
SEATTLE — Since Lewis County’s last “100-year flood” a decade ago, the county has granted more than 100 permits for new development in the floodplain.
Now, as the water recedes from last week’s flood, people are wondering how much development and nearby logging contributed to the disaster.
“It’s kind of sad, we keep repeating the same mistakes, even when we know better,” Andy McMillan, a longtime wetlands manager for the state Department of Ecology, told The Seattle Times.
“It’s the same old things coming into play — there’s money to be made, and people want to make the most money for their land.”
Lewis County leaders say it’s unfair to blame them for dramatic weather — and they predict development will continue.
“The floodplain in the Chehalis is so vast that the filling in the floodplain for local development has no significant impact,” said Bob Nacht, the director of community development for the city of Chehalis.
Locals discussed a ban on development in the floodplain after each of the last big floods.
But these debates make little headway in Centralia and Chehalis, where as much as 70 percent of the cities lie within the floodplain, according to Lewis County.
Instead of stopping economic development, city officials made sure new building was done on land built up above 1996 flood levels and hoped for the best.
“We are certainly not going to guarantee any development won’t get flooded here,” Nacht said.
Lewis County isn’t the only flood-prone area in Washington where development is allowed.
But some counties have instituted bans, like Thurston County.
“We had a lot of flooding problems and we didn’t want to perpetuate the situation,” said Mike Kain, Thurston County’s manager of planning and environmental services.
Some local governments have decided state and federal flood-prevention standards are not protective enough.
It still floods every year in King County.
But the Federal Emergency Management Agency gives King County the best insurance rating in the nation because of restrictions on development in the floodplain, according to Jim Chan, director of building services.
While he was public-works director for Lewis County, Mark Cook pushed county commissioners for stricter building regulations in the floodplain.
“The cities came unglued,” said Cook, who lives in Centralia.
“There is a way of doing business that has been around a long time.”
The county commissioners fired Cook in May after about four years on the job.
One commissioner said there had been a “clash of wills,” the local newspaper reported.
Cook now says there were a number of reasons, but one was his opposition to continuing to fill and develop the floodplain.
“Change is hard, and sometimes the messenger doesn’t always survive the task,” said Cook, who now works as a private consultant for a variety of clients, including Lewis County.
“No one wants to hear their current allowable permitting practices could have adverse consequences.”
Some neighborhoods in Chehalis and Centralia were flooded last week for the first time in recent history.
“There’s a lot of stuff in the floodplain that wasn’t there in 1996,” said Jim Park, senior hydrologist for the state Department of Transportation.
“The water goes somewhere; it doesn’t just disappear.”
Local logging
While building has continued in Lewis County, so has logging in the forests surrounding Chehalis.
While logging has declined overall in Western Washington in the past 15 years, cutting is still happening in the industrial forests that cover the Chehalis watershed.
Since 2002, about 230,972 acres of the watershed have been logged, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
That’s about 2.3 percent of the watershed each year.
But the effects of clearcuts and logging roads can be long-lasting.
They can create the conditions that lead to landslides during floods, with logs and debris clogging up streams, culverts and even rivers, said Gordon Grant, a hydrologist for the federal Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis, Ore.
The evidence of this problem has been found all over the county after last week’s flooding.
That means even more flooding when the big rains finally come.
Thousands of pieces of wood were found scattered across fields in the Boistfort Valley, which straddles the south fork of the Chehalis.
In just one large clear-cut, nearly a dozen slides emptied into a creek.
Discussion has already begun on tougher local development restrictions, but minds may be hard to change in Lewis County.
“If you didn’t allow Wal-Mart to come in, people would say, ‘Why are you stifling economic development?”’ said Bob Johnson, the community-development manager for Lewis County.
“It’s a really hard balance. I understand why this development is happening.”
