It has been 16 months since the skies opened up and dumped 20 inches of rain in the Willapa Hills, causing the river to rise and forever etching the flood of December 2007 into the history of the Chehalis River Basin. Damage in Lewis County alone was estimated as high as $500 million. More than 100 homes were destroyed, and another 500-plus damaged in Lewis County. About 500 people stranded by rising water were rescued, some by helicopter, others by boat. In a story by The Chronicle on the one-year anniversary of the flood, Thurston County Emergency Manager Kathy Estes said, "While we can measure the damage of last year's flood in dollars and numbers, there is no true measurement of the suffering and misery the disaster caused to the people whose homes were destroyed." The human heartbreak that we viewed prompted us to vow to push for real solutions to flooding in the Chehalis River Basin. We took on politicians that hadn't gotten much done in the past decades. We disagreed with federal bureaucrats who seemed more interested in protecting Interstate 5 from being shut down than protecting the people of the basin. The first bit of positive news came when the state Legislature formed the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority and seeded it with $2.5 million to study flood control. Last month the flood authority unanimously agreed to spend $250,000 for a second phase study on the feasibility of building two earthen dams on the upper watershed to control river flow. The next step was for the Legislature this session to tweak a bill allowing for a flood taxing district to be formed by the three counties that are impacted by Chehalis River flooding: Lewis, Thurston and Grays Harbor counties. Sponsored by Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, the bill made it through the Senate. Then it was, according to Sen. Swecker, hijacked by the Local Government and Housing Committee in the House. That committee changed the makeup of the flood district's board, going from an elected four-member board with representation from the three counties and the Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis to a board made up of appointed members from all of the cities along the river basin, and any tribe that borders the district. "It's a disaster," Sen. Swecker said. The changes effectively kill the bill, and at best delay any future real basinwide flood protection. We believe this is backdoor political maneuvering by some who are not interested in going beyond protecting I-5 from flooding. To the best of our ability, we will continue to push for real solutions, and in the future when the skies once again open up we will hold accountable those who have mucked up the process.
