Repairs to Tanana River Levee near $1.5 million
Published Sunday, November 9, 2008
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FAIRBANKS — Fairbanks is paying more this year to clean up the Tanana River Levee than it has in the previous two decades combined.
Work crews are felling trees and clearing brush across the entire 21-mile levee system, which separates Fairbanks from the Tanana River. A different crew has already removed dozens of beaver dams from three major drainage channels, and the Fairbanks North Star Borough expects it might also need to patch spots along the levee’s 10-foot-tall wall that have sunk since it was built in the 1970s.
The borough, which has been responsible for maintaining the levee since 1987, is working under a deadline — it hopes to prove the levee is ready to handle a major flood before federal emergency managers publish new flood-zone maps for Fairbanks — a mapping project underway.
Fairbanks isn’t alone, as waterfront communities across the country are taking similar looks at their respective levees. The efforts are compounded by a stricter set of maintenance rules put in place after Hurricane Katrina smashed levees in New Orleans in 2005.
The borough has hired the Corps of Engineers as a partner as it spends close to $1.5 million to comb the levee of brush and trees. Without that work, the Federal Emergency Management Agency could wind up labeling much of Fairbanks as officially flood-prone — a change that could leave the community paying millions more, collectively, for individual flood insurance plans in the future.
Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker said the borough sensed it was on its own when it came time to pay for the project and is dipping into the taxpayer-supported general fund for money. Bob Shefchik, the borough’s chief of staff, said the work will help protect against the type of damaging floods that hit parts of the Midwest this summer.
All told, the project amounts to the biggest tuneup of the levee system in years.
Preliminary repairs
Randy Johnson, a deputy public works official, said the borough had routinely set aside money each year to maintain and inspect the levee — $53,000 during the last fiscal year, according to public budget books.
The top of the 10-foot-tall levee wall is broad enough for someone to drive a truck down, as Johnson did on a tour Tuesday afternoon. It works as a barrier to protect the developed community from the Tanana River, which has occasionally spilled its banks and flooded town — most notoriously in 1967.
The levee also sprouts finger-like channels that extend south toward the river before curving west. Water that makes its way over or seeps underneath the levee wall during flooding is channeled by one of three drainage ditches back toward either the Chena or Tanana rivers.
This fall, crews hired by the borough began work Johnson said will help the channels drain better and keep tree roots from penetrating and compromising the gravel levee. He said the wall itself also will likely need to be patched this winter or spring in places where it has sagged.
“We know of a couple of areas that the Corps has said, ‘You know, we’re watching that,’” he said.
The work comes after changes in national policies over how levees should be maintained, changes that stemmed largely from the Hurricane Katrina disaster in Louisiana three years ago. Congress in 2007 established a National Levee Safety Program and ordered the Corps of Engineers to survey roughly 2,000 levees across the country, according to Marcus Palmer, a project manager with the Corps’ Alaska district.
The Tanana levee received “acceptable” ratings during that sweep, but Johnson indicated other changes in federal levee policy have left the borough with a taller hill to climb as it looks to re-certify infrastructure that might have received a clean bill of health a few years ago. Fairbanks — which has little debt compared to many cities and counties outside the state — is set up to absorb the financial hit of an unplanned investment in its levee better than many places outside the state.
“Fortunately in Alaska, the boroughs and cities have a little bit of a savings to react to this,” he said.
The work arrives smack in the middle of federal emergency management officials’ effort to update flood-zone maps that cover Fairbanks and much of the country.
Ryan Ike, who directs the risk-analysis branch for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Alaska, Washington and other northwest states, said Congress took steps five years ago to update the country’s flood-zone maps.
Fairbanks wound up on the agency’s list of places that need new maps, which Ike said will likely be published within the next few months.
It’s the question of what those maps might look like that has raised some questions in Fairbanks.
FEMA involvement
FEMA wants proof that the 30-year-old levee is still capable of protecting the city from a major flood.
Without it, far more property will be labeled flood-prone than on existing flood maps, which private insurance companies rely on to figure out how much money a particular property owner should pay for flood insurance.
Hence the borough’s request that the Corps of Engineers — which originally built the levee system and an accompanying dam on the Chena River — issue a fresh “certification” for the levee to prove it’s still in tip-top shape, a request that has led to the $1 million-plus maintenance project.
Ike said FEMA officials aren’t singling out Fairbanks.
“It’s a national effort,” Ike said. “All communities with levees and studies are going to have the same requirement to make sure those levees are still in good shape.”
Flood insurance for someone looking to buy a home in a neighborhood at high risk for flooding can be all-but inescapable. Beyond that, local zoning laws already require builders working in neighborhoods and on properties labeled flood-prone to construct well above flood levels.
The owner of a $150,000 home in a neighborhood deemed high-risk could expect to pay anywhere between a few hundred and a couple thousand of dollars a year for flood insurance — a number determined by a combination of federal flood maps and building elevations.
“It’s got our name on it, but it’s actually a national flood insurance policy,” Fairbanks insurance agent Jim Bradbury said of the average household flood insurance plan. “So we just go by FEMA’s rules.”
But flood maps have lagged far behind developers’ activity and community growth. A look at aerial maps of land east of Peger Road shows one-half a gravel pit-turned-lake is flood-prone, and the other is not.
Whitaker said the borough has long sought new maps. They’re looking specifically at three areas — four square miles of largely industrial land in South Fairbanks, residential neighborhoods east of Fort Wainwright along the Chena Badger Slough, and much of the community of Salcha.
Now, public officials are going through the major levee maintenance project — and could wind up paying more than the just $50,000 a year to care for the system from here on out — to make sure those maps get better instead of worse.
“We could spend a million and a half (dollars) now” to fix the levee, Whitaker said. “Or we could spend, every year as a community, $20 million for flood insurance. That’s kind of what it boils down to.”
Community Discussion
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i hope they get rid of all the burned out cars on the levee.
maybe they can fill the cars with gravel and use them as structural reinforcement...
Too bad they got rid of the old Jack Wade Dredge, they could have used it to dig a deeper main channel closer to Salchaket..
Maybe someone can answer my question. (Here goes) I've noticed while driving the Richardson home each day, many people cutting wood in the "clean up" area. Do those folks need some sort of permit or is it ok to "help yourself"?
North Pole had a problem with their public works guy:
http://www.courtrecords.alaska.gov/pa/pa...
Question: Did the FNSB hire the same guy who was stealing from the City of North Pole?
I know Randy Johnson and was greatly disappointed with what occurred years ago.
I also respected him for what he was doing in his job capacity with the City long before his downfall.
I don't know who "CEO" thinks he is, but maybe he should out himself. It is no secret what Randy did and yet it looks like he was able to find a way to turn himself around and gain the trust of his current employer.
There will always be cowards out there willing to take a cheap shot. All my best to Randy.
Armchair bureaucrats. Armchair engineers.
Isn’t it great that we all can express an opinion about this community?
imusuallyright-it is great, except when the dont let us comment on the stories such as a local politician getting caught w/cocaine. :)
imusuallyright-it is great, except when the dont let us comment on the stories such as a local politician getting caught w/cocaine. :)
Yeah, AR-85, except that is really not much of a story anyway!! He was alledged to have a very small amount of coke, and by the indictment, he was disposing of it!!
I'm beginning to think that, in his youth, Yukonjohn dreamed of growing up to be a Public Defender.
Imusuallyright---agreed.
Yukonjohn, if it is not much of a story, then why block the comments? all the fun of sarcasm blocked. :)
CEO, the Randy Johnson you referred to is 52 years old. The Randy Johnson who works for the Borough is in his late 30's, early 40's. Two different people.
It will be interesting to see what the next story that has nothing to do with political figures becomes the topic of political figures. Hard to get the election fever of focusing on people rather than issues
out of your blood isn't it. At least the lower 48 people have disappeared from the comment sections of stories, except when the name Palin is mentioned.
What does clearing the brush off the levee ditches do to help or hinder flooding?
I have noticed it on the ditch between Badger Road and the Tanana???
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