A dump truck working with Sterling Breen Construction drops a load of dirt on top of the Airport Road levee in Chehalis on Tuesday afternoon.
The two-part, $1.2 million Airport Levee Project underway near the Chehalis-Centralia Airport is falling behind schedule this year due to record rainfall in September and a late start rebidding for fill material, according to Lewis County Public Works.
The first part of the widening project was scheduled to be completed last Monday, with crews adding about 50,000 cubic yards of dirt to widen the levee.
However, Sterling Breen, of Centralia, the contractor for the project, will likely have to return next summer to add a remaining 20,000 cubic yards of dirt. The extra work will be added to the second portion of the project, which is focused on widening the levee between Interstate 5 and Airport Road.
Lewis County Public Works Director Tim Elsea said the county already expected the entire widening project to be complete by the summer of 2014, so the overall timeline is still intact.
Lewis County, the lead on the project, received an extension to use the $1.2 million in state funding by Dec. 31, 2014.
“There is a chance we will be able to complete (the first phase) this year,” Elsea said. “It will take a small miracle. We are pushing just to go ahead and get the improvements on the ground, but we are not in any danger of losing the funding.”
Although construction is not likely going to be complete by this year, Elsea said, the work already done will offer more protection from flooding compared to previous winters.
“I definitely think it will be improved,” Elsea said. “The base will be wider, the conduit for water going through will be wider. We won’t be in any worse shape.”
The final result of the widening work will set a base for eventually raising the levee and help protect the airport, Interstate 5 and the complex of retail stores that generate about $550,000 of revenue per day.
The wider levee will protect against 50-year flood events similar to the 2009 flood, the fourth highest flood of record in Lewis County.
The top of the levee will be widened from about 15 feet to 30 feet. The levee is about 1.8 miles long.
An unusually wet August followed by record-setting rainfall in September slowed construction this year, Elsea said. The total rainfall in September was 11.74 inches, doubling the previous record of 5.61 inches in 1978.
Airport Manager Allyn Roe said the heavy rain completely stopped construction at times this fall.
“Originally, the hope was to get it fully completed this year, but with the wet weather that really delays things,” Roe said. “So it will just get closed up and finished next year.”
The widening project, which started on July 22, was intended to start earlier to avoid the autumn construction, but bids for the project came in higher than expected due to a specific fill material.
The Corps of Engineers required a fill material that does not occur naturally in the area, Elsea said, so all the bids came back higher to account for the specific type of dirt.
“We worked with the Corps to get something that worked for them and was naturally occurring around here,” Elsea said. “We put it back out to bid and it was about $500,000 less than the original bid.”
Despite the delay in construction, seeing a flood mitigation project underway is a positive step forward, Roe said. The work thus far will leave the levee at the same height or above this winter.
“It’s still providing protection and is more protective than we had before,” Roe said. “It’s a night and day difference as far as what we had.”
