EO: Walden walks the Walla Walla River

By SAMANTHA TIPLER
Friday, September 2, 2011 12:35 pm
https://bit.ly/nZAt6Y

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., spent an hour Thursday in Milton-Freewater talking trees and shrubs. And weeds, blackberry bushes and levees.

He also heard how federal agencies are reaching agreement on how much vegetation should grow along the levee that contains the Walla Walla River as it courses through the city.

Lt. Col. David Caldwell, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District, briefed the Hood River Republican on progress the corps and other federal agencies are making on the vegetation issue in Milton-Freewater, and nationwide.

The Milton-Freewater Water Control District, which successfully passed a $2.85 million bond in November to pay for levee improvements, is vexed by the question of how much vegetation should grow on its levees along the Walla Walla. The Army Corps of Engineers said none; the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife want some vegetation to provide shade for fish. The two sides have been wrangling about it for more than a year.

“They were at a real logger’s head between the corps and environmental agencies about ‘no vegetation, yes vegetation,’”?Walden said after his brief tour.?“I think what you’re seeing is a better balance by both parties, some vegetation is probably fine, some is probably harmful.”

Caldwell told Walden the army corps has begun a nationwide study into what vegetation may be good or bad on a levee system, a study called a system-wide improvement framework, or SWIF.

Water control board Chairman Manford Anliker said a national plan may not fit everyone.

“We’re wondering how we can find a program for all the levees. Look at the Red River Valley, the Mississippi, the Shenandoah, the Sacramento Valley. These are all different types of levees,”?Anliker said. “What works here may not work for somewhere else. We all have a unique fingerprint. These levees all have a unique fingerprint.”

Afterward, Walden said he agreed with that sentiment.

“Every levee system is going to be different. Every water system is different. Hopefully that facilitates some common-sense local decision-making on how to do levees such as this. It may be very different from what you do in California or South Dakota,”?he said. “The key ingredient here is you have safety first: A levee that isn’t going to be degraded because of the vegetation. And second, if you have vegetation that provides an environmental benefit, that’s all fine. But what you don’t want is vegetation that’s going to degrade the levee that they’re fixing.”

On a local level, the corps has worked with the marine fisheries and the fish and wildlife services to complete another short-term plan, called a woody vegetation management plan.

“It’s really a simplified approach to try to figure out what trees do need to come out — that they’d be putting the levees at risk — and which things can be sustained,”?Caldwell said.

Once he has a clearer set of guidelines, the army corps can work with the water control district to make sure the levee system meets those guidelines.

“I’m not sure how fast all this will take place,”?Caldwell said. “But my goal is before I leave command next summer that we have something in place that’s a good interim solution.”

Interim for Caldwell meaning 5-15 years.

Next summer the water control district expects to finish its repairs to the levee structural problems. This summer work is focused on fixing the drop structure below the Nursery Street bridge, cleaning out and fixing culverts and raising the height of parts of the levee system to meet new Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations, said John Wells, project engineer with Anderson Perry & Associates, the firm the water control district hired to design the repairs. Next summer it will work on the Couse Creek bridge area just south of town.