While Aberdeen and Hoquiam await word on large-scale federal grants, preconstruction work continues on the North Shore Levee and the North Shore Levee West Segment.
Aberdeen Public Works Director Rick Sangder and Hoquiam City Administrator Brian Shay both visited with HDR Engineering recently to get an update on progress on both levees.
“Feels like we are on track,” said Sangder after the meeting with the firm, which is handling most aspects of the projects.
Shay said the meeting was to “go through all the details on both the West Segment and the North Shore Levee.” He left feeling that both projects are still on the path toward construction beginning in 2023.
Hoquiam already has a contract with HDR to fully manage the design, permitting and right-of-way for the West Segment, which will protect properties not included in the original North Shore Levee design. The segment essentially wraps around Hoquiam from Kuhn Avenue in the north, south along the west bank of the Hoquiam River, west through the Port District to about Adams Street, then north to Karr Avenue.
“HDR is out in the field doing cultural resources analysis, wetlands analysis, getting ready to start geotechnical analysis where they’re looking at soils to determine the type of levee it will support,” said Shay. “So I would say the West Segment is going great guns now.”
Shay said a scope of work and budget to finish the designing, permitting and right-of-way work on the North Shore Levee is being prepared between HDR and the city of Aberdeen, which will have to be approved by the Aberdeen City Council.
Both cities are in the process of applying for, or waiting for word on, BRIC grant applications. BRIC stands for Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. The grants are through FEMA and are big-money grants for big-money projects like the levees.
Hoquiam is awaiting word on its BRIC grant application and hopes to hear something in November. If they are successful, the city could be looking at $34 million in BRIC grant money for the West Segment. Couple that with $4 million in Office of the Chehalis Basin grant money already being used to develop the final design, and Shay believes that would be enough to fully fund construction of the West Segment.
Aberdeen and Hoquiam worked together on their successful BRIC grant pre-application, which allows them to move into the full application process. That application is due Nov. 8 for initial state review. It’s about a 40-page grant application, highly technical and requiring, among other things, a detailed cost-benefit analysis.
The maximum amount of the award would be $50 million, which requires about a $12.5 million match. Aberdeen recently committed $7 million in armory fire insurance settlement funds to the project, and Hoquiam’s share would be about $5 million, a 60/40 split based on the construction cost within each city.
For the other $500,000, the Aberdeen City Council recently approved a $500,000 loan from the city’s Stormwater Utility Fund for the match. The total cost of the North Shore Levee is estimated at about $78 million, with about $25 million in funding having been secured for the project over the years, about $7 million already spent or under contract. So, if the maximum amount of the BRIC grant, $50 million, were to be awarded, the full cost of construction of the North Shore Levee would be more or less covered.
Both levees combined would protect more than 5,000 properties and about 1,400 businesses, and remove more than $2 million in annual flood insurance premiums. It’s believed that removing properties from the mandatory flood insurance requirements means developers would be more likely to move in and develop some existing properties within both cities.
Shay is confident that both projects are well on their way to construction in 2023.
“They’re going to happen,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that they will get done.”
