An independent engineering report reveals a major swath of west Salt Lake City may be declared a flood zone, forcing either 1,400 homeowners to buy costly flood insurance or the county to build a $14 million levee along the Jordan River.
The reason: a hurricane in New Orleans.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, due in part to Hurricane Katrina's deadly 2005 flood, has toughened its criteria for levees nationwide. According to a Salt Lake County-commissioned report, obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune , the current Jordan River levee in the Rose Park area -- from North Temple to Redwood Road -- fails to meet new federal requirements.
If FEMA decertifies the decades-old earthen dike, neighborhoods stretching from Jordan Meadows to Westpointe would become a flood-hazard zone. At least 1,600 structures (most of them homes) west of the river would be remapped into the federal flood-insurance program.
To avoid that, the county could fortify the levee -- perhaps with a $14 million concrete "sea wall" -- but that would require ripping out thousands of encroaching trees and all vegetation along the two-mile path.
The news has engineers scrambling and environmentalists fuming. As for residents in the potential flood zone? They're unaware and, when told, skeptical.
"They're chasing shadows," says Richard Herrick, who has lived west of the Jordan for 34 years. "Another government goose chase."
Neil Stack, the county's engineering director, insists the risk is overblown. "The likelihood of it ever happening is almost zilch," he says about a potential flood. "We're in the g--damned desert."
To fend off FEMA, county engineers are hurrying to finish a hydrology analysis that projects the Jordan's water flow over 100 years. If the numbers prove lower than FEMA's estimates, flood-control managers hope to dodge having to construct a levee. The estimated $14 million price tag would be crippling. County flood control's annual capital-improvement budget is only $2 million. That means taxpayers potentially would be tapped through special assessments or a general tax hike.
Commissioned last spring by the county for $100,000, the CH2M Hill engineering report offers two alternatives: Fortify the west bank's existing levee or build a new one -- primarily along the Rose Park Golf Course -- farther back. Under the second scenario, the city could save trees, but would have to exercise eminent domain to reclaim portions of privately owned yards -- and perhaps some homes, Stack says. In either case, crews would have to clear out any trees and shrubs extending 18 blocks across an approximate 50-foot "vegetation-free zone."
The issue is a political hand grenade for Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, who already faces criticism for a $40 million sports complex planned nearby. It's equally perilous for county Mayor Peter Corroon, a fiscally conservative environmental advocate who is running for governor.
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No mighty Mississippi » FEMA hasn't acted yet, so county and city officials plan to lay low, hoping the agency shelves the Jordan levee during the molasses-slow federal process.
But early work from the hydrology study reveals sections of the Jordan would have flooded during the highest water marks that have been recorded at a 500 North gauging station the past 40 years. Therefore, channel improvement -- perhaps widening some segments -- may be necessary, according to a Feb. 10 letter from Stack to Becker.
"The majority of the existing levee has less than the required three feet," Stack writes. At the same time, Stack told The Tribune that flood-control officials "haven't bought off" on the independent report.
That report flatly states the eroding berm is "not certifiable" and unacceptable to Army Corps of Engineers standards. It blames the encroachment of trees, fences and utilities along with erosion and rodent damage. FEMA, the report warns, "very likely" will declare that northwestern patch of Salt Lake City a flood zone.
But Jeff Niermeyer, the city's director of public utilities, insists the levee has "not come close to being over-topped" since it was built in the early 1980s. (City and county officials downplay the historic 1983-84 flood as a snowmelt anomaly.)
"The Jordan River is a far cry from the mighty Mississippi," Niermeyer says. Unfortunately, he adds, FEMA treats a breach along the Mississippi Delta and the meandering Jordan "pretty much the same."
Days before Christmas, engineers huddled with Becker and Corroon to plot a strategy. The mayors agreed to study the Jordan's flow further and send those numbers this spring to the feds.
"We believe the hydrology study will show the levee is safe," Corroon says.
If not, he says, crews could widen and deepen some channels along the river. He also says local governments could try to "indemnify" residents by agreeing to clean up after a flood and not require the extra homeowner insurance (which typically tops $1,000 a year).
"We're not sure," he says, "if the federal government would even allow that."
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'Bunch of bull' » Lifelong west-siders chuckle at FEMA's notion that their boyhood swimming spot one day could swallow them.
Ken Partridge took dips in the Jordan as a child, and now, at age 77, he regularly drives over the river from his parents' house, which he now owns. "In no time since I was a small boy has the river ever flooded," he snarls. "It's always way below the bank.
"It's a bunch of bulls---, in the vernacular of the peasantry."
Partridge says politicians can "take a flying leap" if they require flood insurance or funding for a new levee.
Such dissidence among her neighbors doesn't surprise Angie Vorher, chairwoman of the Jordan Meadows Community Council. "I see no way that they can afford it," she says. "We have a lot of diversity and poor people in our area. Even middle class -- that's a hell of a lot of money."
Vorher also calls it disappointing and "very scary" that no residents have been informed about the levee problem. She says it strains her faith in the transparency from city and the county.
Becker was in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday and did not respond to a request for comment. But City Councilman Carlton Christensen, who represents the area, says he considered raising the issue publicly last year, but opted to wait for the hydrology study.
"We do studies and analysis all the time without necessarily going through a huge public process," he says. "It hasn't been decertified yet, and there's some question about whether those historic marks are accurate."
The river "doesn't keep me awake at night, and I've lived by it my whole life."
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'An eco-disaster' » To prevent water from tunneling around dead tree roots, Niermeyer notes, FEMA prefers plowing a riverbank strip wide enough "to land a plane."
The approach, conservationists swear, is wrongheaded and offensive -- especially if girded by a steel or concrete wall.
"It would be an eco-disaster," says Ty Harrison, professor emeritus of biology at Westminster College and a board member with Tree- Utah. "The idea of diking is an ancient, unacceptable way to treat rivers."
Environmentalists fear the loss of precious bird habitat, including thousands of cottonwoods and willows along with more invasive Russian olives and tamarisk.
"FEMA is on the attack," says Ray Wheeler, an urban planner who canoes the Jordan from his riverfront home in Glendale. "They mistakenly believe tree roots weaken levees."
What's more, he says, a federal mandate would threaten private property. "Homes all up and down the river get a haircut," he warns. "The dike blasts right through their fences and yards."
Destroying critical habitat based on a murky threat from a mild river, makes no sense, says Vaughn Lovejoy, ecological restoration coordinator for TreeUtah.
"I'm hoping sanity will reign on this," he says, "but that remains to be seen."
