Mount Vernon: River rage
Mount Vernon takes on its age-old problem of flooding amid concern over FEMA’s projected flood elevations

By Rachel Robertson


A small section of the portable floodwall purchased by the City of Mount Vernon and Dike District 3 was erected for a demonstration by Aquafence, the Norwegian company that makes the floodwall.

The wealth of the river and its surrounding lands – timber, wildlife, fertile ground and natural beauty – has drawn people for centuries. Indeed, the Native people have been traced back 9,000 years.
But through the years the Skagit has also brought hardship. Native tales tell of lodges, canoes and stores of food carried away by rushing waters. Records as early as 1896 detail property and livestock losses, as well as heroic efforts by the communities to save their towns – volunteers shoveling frantically to raise the levees in a race with the rising water.
The struggle continues today as Mount Vernon, along with the other Skagit River delta communities, attempt to manage the flooding threat.

What Causes the Flooding?
Warm tropical storms drawn by low-pressure systems hit the mountains with force, dumping rain and sometimes causing rapid snow melt.
Fed by three major tributaries (the Cascade, Sauk and Baker rivers) and several minor watersheds, water flows from many directions into the Skagit River.

How Serious is the Threat for Mount Vernon?
“I would place that in a category of a high-risk area,” said David Brookings, manager of Skagit County’s Natural Resources Division. “Both the cities of Mount Vernon and Burlington are located on the floodplain, obviously, and very close to the Skagit. And the Skagit, currently, has limited flood protection.”
Downtown Mount Vernon is vulnerable because it is situated very close to the river, so when the river rises it has been necessary to build a wall of sandbags. The flood fight is particularly challenging because several downtown businesses are on the water side of the levee.
Not all floods are the same. The worse they are the less likely they are to occur. For example, a 100-year flood is an extreme flood that has a 1 percent chance of occurring on any given year; there is a 10 percent chance that a less severe 10-year flood will occur. However, that is just statistical likelihood, and so it is possible for multiple flooding events to occur within a year.

What Protection is in Place?
The most obvious protection is from the dams on the Skagit and Baker rivers. Additionally, 80 miles of Skagit County is divided into dike districts that are responsible for building and maintaining levees along both banks of the Skagit River.
“We have very active diking districts that have constructed levees to protect the urban and the agricultural lands,” Brookings said. “And the levees provide what we call 25-year flood protection, which is far less than what has been defined as a 100-year flood. They are still looked on as one of the finest levee systems in the region, but they do not provide that 100-year level of protection.”
Just this year the city upgraded its flood fighting capabilities. Along with Dike District 3, they purchased a portable floodwall. The wall comes in easily stored 4-foot by 8-foot panels that are set into a cement track. With the track already complete, Mount Vernon can have a wall set up from Division Street Bridge to Kincaid Street in just two to three hours with a crew of 28 people. That’s a breeze compared to the 12 hours it takes 2,000 volunteers to construct a wall of sandbags.

A Storage Setback
Providing flood storage (essentially holding back some of the flood waters) is one of the main purposes of river dams, however, Skagit County has been struggling to increase storage capacity at the Baker Hydroelectric Project, which is undergoing a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relicensing process. In 2004 the then-Skagit County Public Works Director Chal Martin requested 140,000 acre-feet of storage there based on recommendations by the county’s consultant, Pacific International Engineering.
“The location of the Baker tributary and the storage located there is hugely important to managing a Skagit River flood, because the Baker is located so far downstream – only 10 to 12 hours of river flow to Mount Vernon. Additionally, the Baker system is a prolific flood water generator – really, on par with the entire Ross Dam drainage basin, which is twice as big,” said Martin, who is currently the public works director and city engineer for the City of Burlington.
In exchange for relinquishing the potential to add 26,000 acre-feet of storage in the upper dam on Baker River, Skagit County accepted the promise of an additional 29,000 acre-feet behind the lower dam. However, the judgment of whether that capacity will be available to Skagit County has been deferred.
“This whole Baker storage thing is mixed up in big politics, and the public is getting hosed,” said Martin. “This is not good public policy and I am dismayed by the lack of leadership being shown on this issue by the federal delegation.”
Others are dismayed, too. “We haven’t seen any commitment on the part of the [U.S. Army] Corps [of Engineers] or Puget Sound Energy to establish that additional storage in the lower Baker system,” said Mount Vernon Mayor Bud Norris, explaining that the city has applied for intervener status in the relicensing process in the hopes they can secure more flood storage.

FEMA Flood Mapping
Avoiding costly disaster and ensuring public safety are the basic ideas behind the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) that was established in 1968. Congress first proposed the program in the 1950s when it was clear that private companies could not profitably provide such insurance.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the agency responsible for administering the NFIP, develops maps to identify hazardous areas so communities can adopt and enforce local ordinances for floodplain development, and thus receive insurance protection from NFIP.
FEMA’s history in the Skagit Valley dates back to the late 1970s when they requested a study of the area by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The results of that study were used to generate flood maps predicting the water elevation levels in the case of a 100-year flood.
Most everyone agrees that those maps, completed in 1985, are sorely in need of updating – a process that began roughly six to seven years ago.
Ryan Ike, senior floodplain program specialist for FEMA’s Region 10, described the current status: “We are working on producing preliminary maps for the lower Skagit River, the delta area. The preliminary maps are not the same as effective – they are preliminary and they mean just that. They are the first cut of the study and FEMA’s models, and we’ve mapped it so it looks similar to a conventional flood insurance rate map but they have not gone through the statutory appeals process and public notification process. So, the preliminary maps are the basis for the public release of the data and the study.”
It is a process that is being carried out all across the nation under the Map Modernization Program, a presidential initiative with congressional support that first acquired funding in 2003.
“We are very excited to be using the newest and certainly most accurate modeling techniques,” Ike said, citing improvements in computer capacity, modeling ability and other techniques that allow them to analyze variables that were previously unaccounted.

The controversies
Mayor Norris explained that there is some anxiety over what the preliminary maps will look like. “They’ve leaked some maps previously that we looked at; that we thought had very exaggerated increases in base flood elevation to the tune of maybe 8 feet in Burlington and 6 feet in Mount Vernon.”
Such increases could be disastrous to development in these areas where any new building or remodeling project of more than 50 percent of an existing building’s value would have to be raised above the projected flood levels of a 100-year flood.
In contention is data assembled in 1923 for Skagit County and the U.S. Geological Survey by James Stewart, a hydraulic engineer. Stewart estimated the floods of 1897, 1909, 1917 and 1921 by examining high water marks and other evidence of past floods.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers included the historic data in their analysis for FEMA, however, a study conducted by Pacific International Engineering at the request of Skagit County argues the data is inaccurate and leads to overestimations of the peak flow and total volume of the 100-year flood hydrograph, which FEMA uses to create their maps.
Ike responded, “We are not using inaccurate data.” He explained that a recent informal count uncovered 13 different reviews of the data.
“We are taking great steps to make sure the information we use is sound and technically supportable and we use the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey as some of our best sources of information,” he said.
Brookings stated that the county has an additional concern with FEMA’s modeling process that discounts the levees, assuming they would fail.
“So, we’ve asked our technical consultant to really get into that and really explore what assumptions went into that philosophy, if that’s reasonable, and to advise the county on if that is overstating the risk or not,” Brookings said.

Who’s involved?
The short answer is: Everyone.
Aside from the city, county, state and federal agencies that deal directly with the flooding threat, groups with environmental interests such as the Nature Conservancy, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Swinomish Tribe and the Upper Skagit Tribe also weigh in on the issues.
City officials, the Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce, and groups such as FloodPAC (a Policy Advisory Conference for flood issues comprised of community leaders) are trying to educate businesses and residents alike, regardless of whether they are situated on the floodplain.
“A lot of people think if they live on a hill the floods don’t concern them that much, but if their access to their job or businesses or any other part of the state or world is cut off then that is a tremendous impact,” Mayor Norris said.
The Skagit River Impact Partnership is an organization including Skagit County, dike districts and cities, that hopes to raise awareness at the federal and state level, although Mayor Norris said that disagreements within the group has been a detriment to that goal.
“As a result we haven’t been speaking with a unified statement to the federal delegation, and they are saying, ‘You guys need to get on the same page,’ and I agree with them. We need to get to a point where we can agree on the hydrology and hydraulics and methodology that is provided by the consultants and what it actually means, because local government actually does play an important role in this process,” he said.

The delay
Although many are anxious to see the FEMA flood maps, there is a general effort to delay it as long as possible to ensure accuracy.
Slated to come out last April and then July, the maps are now delayed indefinitely. Ike explained, “We are working with the county on a nearly daily basis and certainly with the communities as they have information to share with us, and we will release the preliminary maps when we feel we’ve collected the best information that’s out there. And, again, if that means delaying the process to make sure we capture that information then we’ll do that.”
Delay is what FloodPAC is hoping for. Leader Don Gordon said the group is “petitioning FEMA to slow down, to take a look and make certain that these numbers were right and honestly consider some of the information that has been developed locally.”
He said, “If FEMA would come to town and have an honest discussion with the experts, I don’t know how they could walk away and say, ‘Gosh, you guys are totally all wet.’”

Impact on Business and Community
Barbara Strauss, co-owner of Strauss Jewelers recalled that in 21 years of business in Mount Vernon there was only one day that the business closed because of flood threat and it has never suffered any property damage.
“People still come, it is just inconvenience for parking,” she said of previous sandbag walls that cut off much of the downtown parking.
Strauss plans on sticking it out in Mount Vernon, believing that a move would be more detrimental to her business than whatever flood management projects may come along.
New business owners Allison and Gene Morelan were not deterred by flooding issues when they opened Relaxation Station two and a half years ago. Gene Morelan, who has lived his whole life in Mount Vernon said, “As long as I can remember, as long as I’ve lived here, downtown has never flooded.”
The bigger fear is the impact on business if the FEMA flood maps raise the flood elevations significantly, requiring any new development to be potentially 6 feet above established buildings.
“It would be a huge economic impact,” Mayor Norris said. “It would be a disincentive to someone to build in our area or to improve a building for business or other purposes. Aesthetically it’s an impact. And all of this for – in our opinion – an unnecessary reason.”
FloodPAC is also trying to get the word out to tax-based entities like schools and hospitals that a decrease in property values will create havoc for their budgets.
“I think there are a lot of effects on the economy that I don’t think people realize are going to happen,” said Kristen Whitener, Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce president. “And it’s not about the business owners that are greedy and we want all this expansion – we just want [the maps] accurate. And I think everybody should want that, if it’s for their businesses or their homes.”

Future Plans
For the last two years a citizens’ advisory group has been working on plans for the redevelopment of the waterfront area of Mount Vernon for which flood protection is a prerequisite. Part of the plan would include the removal of seven businesses that are currently in the floodway, which garnered some opposition because one building is historic.
Strauss commented, “If they don’t do anything about the flooding it’s not going to make any difference that it is a historical downtown because it’s either going to die or the flood is going to destroy it.”
“Essentially getting those businesses out of the 100-year floodplain is going to be huge,” Whitener said. “It’s going to be more opportunities for growth or expansion or whatever we want to do down there and that’s going to open up a lot of things for the downtown.”
Others are worried about the impact of construction for business during redevelopment, but Allison Morelan said, “You just got to get through it and then it will be better. You can’t get better without change.”
Mayor Norris said of the project, “I’m extremely excited. You know, we’ve talked about doing something with regard to flood protection and parking here in this city for several decades, but we’ve never progressed this far to the best of my knowledge, and so I hope that we can keep our momentum up and keep progressing to our goal.”

Mayor Bud Norris overlooks the Skagit River from the revetment in downtown Mount Vernon.




Allison Morelan was not deterred by flooding issues when she opened Relaxation Station in downtown Mount Vernon two and a half years ago.



Barbara Strauss has been in business 21 years in downtown Mount Vernon and is planning on more good years for Strauss Jewelers.