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Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Covering Dallas, Monmouth, Independence, Falls City and surrounding areas since 1868
January 24, 2012
POLK COUNTY -- Officials in Polk County's communities are assessing the scope of damage and financial toll from last week's widespread flooding.
Polk County declared a state of emergency on Friday and will seek reimbursements for damages from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Polk Administrator Greg Hansen said.
County and local governments are all tallying the cost of the flood; the collective amount will determine whether Polk qualifies for FEMA dollars.
"I think to qualify, you have to have damage that exceeds more than $260,000," Hansen said before press time. "I don't know for sure where we are now, but I would be surprised if we weren't over that."
Hansen said the county received $600,000 from the federal government for the 1996 flood.
County officials were still trying to assess impacts to area bridges on Monday. Many county roads, meanwhile, have lost shoulder rock and gravel and have seen some minor slides.
"There will need to be repairs to pretty much all of the southern county road system," Hansen said.
Between the sheriff's office and public works employees, overtime hours will "be over 500 to 600 hours by the time we're done," Hansen said.
Dallas suffered damage to its wastewater plant and erosion on streets and trails in its parks. Public works crews were sweeping streets this week, clearing mud off trails and removing trees in danger of falling, said City Manager Jerry Wyatt.
Flooding left standing water in some neighborhoods and impacted three municipal facilities in Independence.
There was significant damage in the Independence Civic Center after the town's sewer system reached capacity and forced sewage throughout the ground floor of the building Thursday.
A recovery team was onsite during the weekend, cleaning and decontaminating the building.
There was 6 feet of standing water in the basement of the Independence Visitor Center on Monmouth Street. The Heritage Museum needed a team of volunteers from Western Oregon University to aid in moving artifacts and materials from the museum's flooded basement to higher ground.
Riverview Park was almost completely inundated after the Willamette River crested. City Manager David Clyne said it's unknown what effects the flood had on the site of the future North Riverfront Ballfield project off Highway 51.
Monmouth fared better than its neighbors to the north and east. Public works director Russ Cooper guessed that overtime hours for his department totaled less than $1,000, while it cost the city $10,000 to rent three pumps to mitigate capacity issues with its wastewater treatment facility.
There were two days last week where the average water flow into the facility totaled 10 million gallons a day, five times the normal volume, Cooper said.
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