KPLU Local News
(2010-03-19)
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King County Executive Dow Constantine questions Army Corps of Engineers Col. Anthony Wright during a briefing on the Howard Hanson dam on Thursday.
Liam Moriarty/KPLU News
The bearer of tidings both glad and grim was Col. Anthony Wright, the district commander of the Army Corps in Seattle. He said the plans for a permanent fix to the Howard Hanson dam would be ready by June, just in time to be included in the federal budget for 2012. On the other hand, he said
"Once it's designed and funded, it's still going to take several years for the fixes to be complete."
Wright said that means at least five more flood seasons.
In the meanwhile, he's proposing an additional $44 million in short-term repairs to bolster the dam. The good news is that that work would make the dam as safe as it ever was, for a while, anyway. The bad news is that there's no money on the current budget to do that. And county exec Dow Constantine pointed out that it'll take six months after funding is secured for the work to be finished.
"Time is of the essence," he said. "The rainy season begins at the end of October, the beginning of November. That means we need to move quickly to secure the funding this spring in order to insure increased safety this winter."
Constantine and the mayors of the cities along the Green River are banging on the doors of Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, urging them to get Congress to cough up the $44 million before June.
They say the threat of flooding hanging over the valley since the dam was weakened last winter is lowering property values, scaring off businesses and stalling the economic recovery.
US Army Corps of Engineers Howard Hanson dam page
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