Thanks to Ms. Spears for this note. It's always a pleasure to hear how city crews have helped residents. I'm glad the residents in her Maplewood neighborhood fared better than in the floods of the early 1990's.

-------------------------------------------
From: 'Bev Spears'
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 11:41:08 AM
To: Council
Subject: City Councilmembers


Just wanted to send a note to the councilmembers to let you know how grateful the Maplewood Addition Community is for the support and response we received during the flood yesterday. I am one of several that dealt with the 1990 flood and participated in sandbagging that year. This current flood wasn't as bad, but could have been had we not begun shoring up the bank when we did. George and his staff were great. They delivered the bulk sand and bags right to our problematic spot so we could save several neighbors and avoid the water intrusion throughout the community if these efforts weren't made. They were all very supportive and we'd like to thank all of you and commend you for the
support. Bev Spears

After water-levels came within a foot of the bottom of our bridges in this recent storm (and the Williams bridge remains closed), I was remembering a 1999 discovery that the Corp of Engineers had over-dredged the Cedar River by FOUR FEET in 1999. At the time, the tribes and other fishery interests warned us that we may have created bad conditions for salmon spawning, but by that time the Corp had done the "damage" and we decided to all live with it.

Now, I'm wondering what would have happened to our bridges and our library if the Corp had not "over-dredged". I think we needed every inch of clearance we had under these facilities. If the riverbed had been four feet higher, I think our library may have even flooded!

Here are the meeting minutes from 1999. I remember at the time that then-mayor Jesse Tanner told me we might have been lucky that the Corp over-dredged, even though he had nothing to do with it.

_____________________________________


April 5, 1999 Renton City Council MinutesPage 112

Cedar River Over-dredging

Gregg Zimmerman, Planning/Building/Public Works Administrator; said inresponse to recent local newspaper articles, Renton has known for a few months that a portion of the lower Cedar River was over-excavated by the Army Corpsof Engineers last summer.

The mistake came to light in November when Renton performed a series of survey cross-sections across the river to evaluate the jobthat had been done. The survey revealed that the over-dredging was up to adepth of four feet in some places.

Mr. Zimmerman emphasized that, during the actual construction, the City of Renton was not involved in the management of the project or in its qualitycontrol. All of the responsibility for this belongs to the Army Corps ofEngineers. Since the mistake was discovered, Renton has been meeting with the Corps of Engineers to determine what the potential impacts might be and whatmitigation, if any, will be required.

Continuing, Mr. Zimmerman explained that the over-dredging has affected the riverbed north of the Williams Ave. bridge and perhaps all the way up to I-405, as evidenced by a significant subsidence of the bottom in some areas. This, in turn, may have been detrimental to the 1998 sockeye run, since the salmon beganto spawn soon after the dredging work was completed but before the upper reachof the river began to subside.

Contrary to assertions made in the media, Mr. Zimmerman said Renton does not believe that the fish habitat has been damaged. In fact, he expected that next year’s run will return to normal levels. He noted that last winter’s weather conditions would have resulted in a significant attrition of fish redds (nests) at any rate, since flow levels exceeded 3,000 cubic feet per second on several occasions.

Maple Valley Highway was briefly closed today, and then reopened with just a single lane closed: Here are the emails we received

UPDATE:

Subject: SR169 now Lane Closure, Bridge Open
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 15:49:18 -0800

WSDOT has now OPENED the southbound lanes of Maple Valley Highway (SR169) between 135th Ave SE and 140th Way SE, but will be keeping the FAR RIGHT LANE (of the two northbound lanes) CLOSED until minor damage to a bridge structure can be completed.

Kelley


EARLIER MESSAGE


Subject: SR169 closed indefinitely from 135th Ave SE to 140th Way SE
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 15:12:40 -0800

Debra Needham just phoned and WSDOT has closed SR169 indefinitely between 135th Ave SE and 140th Way SE due to a damaged bridge. We will provide further details when they become available.

Also, City crews are aware of some lodged debris under the Williams Avenue bridge, and they are working on it.

Kelley

From: Kelley Balcomb-Bartok <kbalcombbartok@rentonwa.gov> [ Save Address ]
To: Randy Corman <rcorman@rentonwa.gov>
Subject: FW: River Flooding Conditions on January 7, 2009
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 10:47:19 -0800


Council,

Here is the current Green River report from Ron Straka that we will be working from to post on the City’s web site.

( Read more... )

From: Julia Medzegian
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 3:16 PM
To: Don Persson; Greg Taylor; King Parker; MarciePalmer; Corman, Randy; Rich Zwicker; Terri Briere
Subject: Fwd: Cedar River update
Importance: High


>>> Kelly Beymer 11/12/2008 2:51 PM >>>
Hi Leslie,

John just called to report that the river is beginning to crest the trail. With the rain increasing up the valley I've requested that the trail be closed from Bronson to Logan through the remainder of the day. Crews will check the status tomorrow morning and I will provide you with an update.

Thank you,
Kelly

___________________________________________________________

Earlier Message:


>>> Preeti Shridhar 11/12/2008 11:22:30 AM >>>
I'll keep you updated.

>>> Deborah Needham 11/12/2008 11:17 AM >>>
The latest information indicates that the Cedar will indeed experience some minor flooding with this storm. It is expected to crest at 4 am about 1 foot above flood stage. The Maplewood annexation area was mentioned as an area of concern by the National Weather Service. If citizens are displaced or lose access to their homes, this will become more involved than a Public Works response.

We are still evaluating this information, and a meeting will take place at 2 pm with field response representatives to also discuss field incident command organization and EOC activation triggers. I will provide an update to you at approximately 5:00 pm following that meeting. By then we will have also gained some more information from a National Weather Service briefing and a State conference call.

deb


Deborah Needham
Emergency Management Director
City of Renton

Scientists say that the December flooding was not a 20 year flood, or a 100 year flood, but a 500 YEAR FLOOD! See the story here.

To understand how bad this is, the scale looks something like this:

Winter flood
5 year flood
20 year flood
100 year flood
500 YEAR FLOOD
1000 year flood
Noah's flood

As a reminder of the rainfall, here is a video from 180th down by IKEA

I found this on youtube. Flooding down in the valley, next to IKEA. This street was allowed to stay open during Monday's flooding, but I would not have driven through.

The quality of this video is very good for a home video, and the informal narration helps you understand what is happening, but there are some profane exclamations in spots, as the water gets high around the vehicles. So turn the sound of if this will offend you.

An article in the Times today talks about King County's new flood protection tax, and why it has been implemented.

Renton's own Economic Development Director was quoted, because of the risk the Rivers pose to land in Renton.'

"It's a really big deal," said Alex Pietsch, head of Renton's economic development. "It's a hard issue to explain. The levees have significant impacts, and nobody has talked about it yet."


Click here to read the article in the Seattle Times