Mellen Street is about to undergo dramatic change as the Washington State Department of Transportation gears up for a three-year project that will add new outside roads and a rebuilt interchange.
Snow falls on Jefferson Street in Centralia a few weeks after the devasting flood of December 2007 where water-damaged belongings and sandbags line the sidewalk waiting for pickup. The neighborhood just off Mellen Street would get some flooding protection from the upcoming project to reflow traffic through the area.
Driving in Centralia will be different once the dust of construction has settled and the last of the asphalt has been lain on the Mellen Street to Blakeslee Junction project on Interstate 5.
In addition to how drivers will get around the Hub City, the project will offer flood protection to the Mellen neighborhood, if not for the interstate — that all-important commercial West Coast freeway arterial, at least for now. That protection will also offer more reliable hospital access during Chehalis River flood events.
And that oddly designed Mellen Street interchange? It may offer additional congestion relief for Centralia in later years if the city grows as expected.
Hospital Access
Mellen Street at I-5 was under four feet of water during the December 2007 flood, cutting off access to Providence Centralia Hospital. That blockage will be a relic of the past once the Mellen Street project is completed and protections provided by the Long Road dike are extended to the Mellen Street bridge at the Chehalis River.
According to Washington State Department of Transportation Regional Engineer Bart Gernhart, short of floodwaters over-topping the dike, which is the same elevation as the Mellen Street bridge, the interchange area should remain dry once the freeway project is completed. The dike and improvements to the interchange will provide a “significant amount of protection,” according to Gernhart.
“We can’t have anymore protection than the top of the (Long Road) dike or the end of the bridge,” Gernhart said.
Flood Protection
Not so the freeway, whose surface will remain lower than the dike and thus left defenseless for now. But the raised freeway will actually help protect the Mellen Street neighborhood; its grade will serve to hydraulically deflect flood water away from the interchange area. Combined with the river’s gradient as it flows downstream, floodwaters are unlikely to, for example, backflow up into the China Creek culverts as floodwaters rush past, according to Gernhart.
But flood protections offered by the project are also dependent upon where floodwaters originate. The 1996, 2007 and 2009 storm events were each completely different storms and impacted the community and specific areas in different ways, Gernhart pointed out. The Mellen Street project will do nothing to prevent flooding if the Skookumchuck River or China Creek spill over their banks.
Still, the Mellen Street project helps — a little. The project “gives us an extra foot or two, somewhere in that range,” to accommodate access to the hospital, according to Gernhart.
The highest flood protection elevation these efforts could provide would be about the same as the 2007 flood event, he said.
“The interstate is still going to flood,” Gernhart said. “Not one inch of interstate will be protected. Access to the hospital is the primary purpose of this.”
Flood Authority
Protecting the freeway from flooding is a project for the future. That protection is awaiting the outcome of efforts currently underway by the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority, according to Gernhart.
Asked if he was talking about a proposed water retention dam in the upper Chehalis Basin near Pe Ell, or some other solution, Gernhart replied, “Any comprehensive solution that does more than just protect the interstate — protects more of the general community.”
He suggested there might be many ways to provide those protections, such as something similar to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Twin Cities project that was originally slated to construct a system of protective levees in the Twin Cities area. But the books on that project are currently being closed by the Army Corps after it was determined the benefits the project provided fell short of the cost to construct it. So WSDOT waits for others to make a decision before offering solutions of their own.
WSDOT’s position, as a cabinet-level agency who answers to the governor, is they are “waiting on the Flood Authority, through funding from the state Legislature ... to come up with a more comprehensive solution.” The transportation agency as yet has no funding to protect the interstate. Instead, WSDOT is waiting for the governor and the Legislature to make a decision. They are in-turn waiting for the Flood Authority to make one.
“It’s basically in the Flood Authority’s hands,” Gernhart said. “There is a fixed amount of time out there before we have to take action.”
The pressure is building. A 2008 WSDOT study estimated that $47 million in revenue was lost when a perfect storm of flooding shut I-5 down in 2007, while simultaneously shutting down all trans-Cascade freight routes due to heavy snow and avalanche conditions. The storm essentially isolated the northwest corner of the state from the rest of the country. An estimated $3.8 million in sales tax revenues were lost, along with 460 jobs and $23.2 million in personal income, the study found. It’s anybody’s guess what another, similar flood would cost.
“We’re basically sitting on the sidelines allowing this other group to look at all those options and come up with whatever the best option is overall,” Gernhart said. “We really don’t have a direct say in it. The dilemma is, the clock’s ticking. People are getting antsy that we haven’t done anything to protect the interstate.”
Detour Plan
In the meantime, if I-5 once again becomes inundated by floodwaters and the main West Coast freight arterial becomes blocked, WSDOT has a detour plan that will route essential freight eastbound on U.S. Highway 12 to Morton, then north on state Route 7 in order to bypass the flooded freeway. Eventually permanent message boards will be installed warning motorists of any delays. Cameras will also be installed to allow WSDOT to monitor the freeway for encroaching water.
“We’ll basically create a freight detour — it’s called a Pass System,” Gernhart said of the freight-prioritized system. “Medicines and things like that are our top priority.”
The online Commercial Vehicle Services — Detour Pass, or CV pass system — will provide a limited number of passes per day to essential freight transporters to travel the detour route until I-5 is reopened, according to the WSDOT website www.wsdot.wa.gov/CommercialVehicle/detourpass. Freight volume will be based on the maximum number of trucks WSDOT determines the highway can handle on the detour route. Passenger vehicles will not be allowed on the detour.
If needed, the detour should be in place “sometime on day two of the next major flood,” Gernhart said, after WSDOT verifies the freeway is going to be submerged, the governor mobilizes National Guard forces and law enforcement assets are put into place to block freeway intersections. The primary focus is safety first.
Not all the elements of the ultimate detour plan, such as permanent message boards, will be in-place for this years flood season. But the detour plan and CV pass system is ready if a flood event closes the freeway again. Portable cameras and message boards will be used, along with the online Pass System.
New Traffic Patterns: Airport Road
Meanwhile, after floodwaters have receded, a newly regraded and realigned Airport Road will pull local traffic off of the interstate, according to WSDOT traffic modeling. In 2010, 450 cars traveled between Centralia and Chehalis on Airport Road. By the end of the 2035 “design year” — the 20-year period after the project is completed — 7,500 cars per day are projected to make the trip over a newly aligned Airport Road to its connection with Louisiana Street in Chehalis. The connection will relieve pressure on the tight Chamber Way interchange, helpful when WSDOT comes through and reconstructs the freeway between Mellen Street and 13th Avenue in Chehalis at some as yet unknown date in the future, Gernhart said. That project is currently being scoped, but no funding exists for design or construction.
Connections Considered and Abandoned: Yew Street Ramp
The northbound I-5 off ramp at Mellen Street was originally designed by WSDOT to end at Mellen and Yew streets. But that plan was quickly quashed. Not only did the ramp impact several homes, but it also left businesses “high and dry,” something they didn’t like, according Gernhart.
“They figured their business would dry up,” he said of the businesses along what is now Ellsbury Street.
They used the argument that their investment, along with the jobs they create and the revenue they generate for the city, would disappear. The current design has the northbound off ramp connecting directly to those businesses. Not everyone was consulted about the change. What city of Centralia officials recall is the ramp connection was simply dropped from consideration; at one meeting it was there, the next it wasn’t.
“One day we walked into a meeting and we were told it wasn’t going to go forward,” city of Centralia Economic Development Director Emil Pierson recalled.
The area in the southeast quadrant of the Mellen Street interchanges was rezoned for commercial use by the city in 2008, Pierson said.
“It was done after the 2007 flood to ensure the area was commercial,” Pierson said. “More damage is actually done when a home is flooded than a business.”
He justified the change, saying it was actually easier to flood-proof a business with a single entrance verses a home with multiple entrances.
Future Mellen Street Interchange Connection: West Summa Street?
There might also be a future intercity connection from the Mellen Street interchange, at least according to Pierson. He said the city may make a connection from the planned Mellen Street overpass at the interchange through an undeveloped area that would connect directly to West Summa Road at Woodland Avenue. Doing so would help alleviate congestion at Summa Road at its intersections at both Kresky Avenue and South Gold Street, which “ends up failing in the future because of increased traffic,” Pierson said.
According the Transportation Element of the city’s 2007 Comprehensive Plan, those intersections are already failing to meet mobility standards during peak the commuter hour.
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Lee Hughes: (360) 807-8239
