The North Shore Levee Project is entering its final design phase, after Aberdeen City Council recently approved $4.27 million to be allocated for the project’s design, construction documents and permits. Of that amount, the city currently has $2.1 million funded for final design, thanks to two recent grants from the Chehalis Basin Flood Authority. Members of Aberdeen Public Works said having these design funds puts them in a position to begin construction for the project sometime in 2019.

“This next phase of work is to really put the preliminary plan and concepts into action, and getting all the way to construction documents, a real thing to send out to bid for permits and everything,” said Aberdeen city engineer Kris Koski.

The North Shore Levee Project has been in development since 2013 and is intended to remove approximately 3,500 properties from the current FEMA floodplain map for the Aberdeen/Hoquiam area by creating a levee that is just under six miles long, and would sit between the cities and the waterfront. Doing this would also remove those properties from the mandatory flood insurance requirement, saving locals millions and increasing property values.

The levee would follow along the east bank of the Hoquiam River, and then curve around residential areas before ending on the west bank of the Wishkah River. Depending on the location, the levee is typically around three to five feet high, and will consist of a combination of earthen berms, concrete walls and sheet pile walls. Aberdeen and Hoquiam have been working in partnership on the project, but Aberdeen is the lead agency and has been administering the funds.

The two cities, which have been consulting with the KPFF Consulting Engineers, have already produced a large number of preliminary design and construction plans sent to FEMA for approval (available online at ezview.wa.gov). But getting this recent funding puts public works staff in a spot where they can target next year’s capital budget projects as a potential source to fund a large chunk of the construction.

Hoquiam City Administrator Brian Shay said there is typically one major project that the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority funds through the state’s biennial capital budget. He thinks it could net them potentially $50 million of what he estimated would be a total of $75 to $80 million to complete the construction.

“The thought is that our project could be the next one that maybe gets the $50 million in the next budget,” said Shay. “We get $50 million, that would be huge toward funding the project. That’s the next target.”

To get that funding, project staff would need to submit a grant request by January 2019, and if approved they would receive it in April or May that year. A major chunk of their current $2.1 million came from a $1.5 million Flood Authority grant approved in the capital budget this past January.

Financial implications

In addition to protecting houses and businesses from the dangers and property damage associated with floods, building the levee is intended to create a significant financial benefit for property owners in the floodplain.

Homeowners in the floodplain are required to purchase flood insurance through either FEMA or a different insurance company, and the annual costs can vary greatly depending on the provider. Aberdeen’s average flood insurance cost was $1,561 per year, according to Koski.

Over the years, FEMA has been raising flood insurance costs in an attempt to self-fund the program, and it recently announced it would be raising individual homeowners’ flood insurance cost an additional 25 percent annually if they do not purchase an elevation certificate. The certificate, which can cost up to $1,000, proves that someone’s house is raised enough above the flood level, or is flood-proof, and allows them to significantly reduce flood insurance costs.

Combined with this is a policy from FEMA that states houses need to be raised if a substantial improvement is made to the house (an improvement project that equals or is more than 50 percent of the market value of the original structure). Because of this, Aberdeen Public Works director Rick Sangder explained that some of the lower-quality houses in Aberdeen and Hoquiam become dilapidated since no one wants the financial burden of needing to raise a house for flood protection.

“It’s such an excessive amount that it’s no longer profitable to do the remodel and flip the house,” said Sangder. “Investors are not buying up these houses and fixing them, that’s how you end up with these dilapidated properties that get abandoned and no one’s living in, and nobody is fixing up.”

Compared to places such as New Orleans, elsewhere in the southern U.S., or the East Coast where hurricanes and flooding are more common, Aberdeen and Hoquiam have received significantly less in damage claims. Since joining the FEMA flood insurance program (Aberdeen in 1984 and Hoquiam in 1979), homeowners have been paid in total $5.1 million, but prior to the January 2015 floods, there had only been $0.9 million paid. It has been a long-lasting economic loss for the two cities, which paid $2.3 million in 2016 alone in premiums for flood insurance. The problem, Koski said, is that these insurance costs aren’t matching the infrequent threat of flood damage.

“Citizens are paying a ton for flood insurance trying to make the overall program solvent, but we are not seeing the big disasters like Katrina,” said Koski. “They aren’t sweeping blowouts, the water comes up, ruins your carpet and appliances, and then goes down.”

By building the levee, these insurance requirements would go away for many local residents, and having that insurance money for other uses would be a major benefit for the area, Shay said.

“All of a sudden, people here have $2.2 million annually to spend on something else,” he said. “New cars, furniture, remodeling their house. There’s so much economic benefit.”

Working with the community

With city officials now fleshing out the final details, they will also be considering the aesthetic appeal of the levee. In the last round of design reviews by FEMA, Koski said they requested an architect be added to the team in order to ensure the levee isn’t too unappealing to live and walk near.

“Because of how much this will be interacting with the public and along streets, we didn’t feel it was a good idea to just make it a blank wall here,” said Koski. “So we added an architect for the visual element.”

Koski, Sangder and the other project staff will be considering whether to build a walking trail along sections of the levee, along with other options, such as placing flower planting boxes along the levee walls.

Koski said the levee type would be built to minimize costs, meaning a berm where there is a lot of space, and a sheet pile wall where it becomes cramped next to buildings or other structures. He added that in current plans, the levee follows city streets as much as possible to minimize the effect on locals, but it does sometimes go through peoples’ yards, which the cities need to get permission for.

“Our approach wasn’t to pick a line and it doesn’t matter if that goes through houses, it’s like a shoehorn, that’s fitting into the environment,” said Koski. “That doesn’t mean it will perfectly follow streets. There are a few places it will cut between homes and has to get from A to B somehow.”

Although not all the final design funding is in yet, Koski, Sangder and Shay said they are optimistic the project will receive it eventually, and said that the cities themselves would need to allocate some of their own funds into the project apart from outside grants.

Koski said their next priority is getting a finalized cost estimate by this summer or early fall in order to get a proposal for the next capital budget in by January 2019.