Draft Starts the Countdown to Revising First Basin Maps in Almost 30 Years
By Marqise Allen
mallen@chronline.com
Chehalis and Lewis County officials will have until sometime after the beginning of the new year to convince or offer some compromise to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to not designate the Twin City Town Center in the development restrictive floodway.
Local leaders received the official draft flood maps of the Chehalis River Basin from FEMA Wednesday afternoon. This now starts the countdown to finalizing the maps, making these the first revision to the basin in nearly three decades.
The maps remain mostly unchanged from the preliminary drafts seen in June. Chehalis’ economic core along Interstate 5, including the Twin City Town Center, is still regarded as being in the floodway. State and county restrictions placed on property in the floodway makes the land difficult to develop new structures and potentially impossible to rebuild existing buildings.
“It looks like there has been a few minor changes,” said Chehalis City Manager Merlin MacReynold. “But it looks pretty much like we expected.”
However, MacReynold said a key changes was the removal of State Street from the floodway.
“It didn’t really flood there, except for 2007,” he said. “But everything flooded in 2007.”
The adjustment, along with other conversations with FEMA officials, has given Chehalis officials hope that both they and FEMA could find common ground and possibly exclude some parts of the city out of the floodway. MacReynold said FEMA is currently running models that would account for such a change to gauge its impact on nearby areas.
Chehalis is also hoping that the consultant they hired to study the maps, Seattle-based Anchor QEA, may find a flaw that would allow for significant changes to be made in the scope of the floodway.
Lewis County officials are worried about not only the property along Interstate 5 in Chehalis, but also property in western areas of the basin.
“The maps have tremendous changes than what we’ve worked with from Pe Ell on down to Boistfort,” Commissioner Ron Averill said about the area now being incorporated into the floodway.
Centralia leaders are talking to FEMA to make minor adjustments about pockets of the city that have been tagged in the floodway, which is unfriendly toward development. The city’s waste water plant, along with parts of Harrison near the Econo Lodge and Goodwill, are inclusions that are a cause for concern, said Community Development Director Emil Pierson.
Property owners will have until sometime after the beginning of the year to submit their comments about the maps to FEMA. The maps will be made available through the county and each of the Twin Cities.
FEMA officials could not be reached Friday for comment on a definitive date.
An appeals period will follow the comment period. Several public meetings will also be held, but those meetings have yet to be scheduled.
FEMA officials stated in a meeting with local leaders last month that the release of the preliminary maps do not set everything in stone, calling it a “first draft.” They said it would take at least 15 months under perfect conditions to finalize the maps.
“There’s a growing understanding that it’s somehow the end of the process, but that’s not the case,” said Ryan Ike, risk analyst branch chief for FEMA Region X. “It really starts the active dialogue.”
