Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302210192
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE FLOOD PROJECT'S LIFE PRESERVER
MANY PEOPLE would get depressed by a 20-year project that kept getting delayed. But Kit Kiser just keeps at it.\ Kit Kiser has perseverance. He has needed it.
If not for him, the Roanoke River flood-reduction project might have been abandoned years ago.
"If someone had told me when I started that this project wouldn't be finished in 20 years, I would have thought they were crazy," Kiser said.
"It has been less than fulfilling to me - and frustrating to a lot of people."
For two decades, Kiser has overseen the $38 million project, which has been studied and debated while floods have kept occurring every two or three years. Half-seriously, Kiser said the project has almost become an albatross for him. He's tried to keep his sense of humor.
"I can't leave [my job] until the project is finished. And I can't be fired until it is complete," he said jokingly.
Construction won't begin until 1995 at the earliest and won't be finished until 1998. City officials had hoped to begin next year.
As the city's director of utilities and operations, Kiser has guided the project through a maze of regulations of the Army Corps of Engineers and through dissension among localities in the Roanoke Valley.
The plan to widen the channel of a 10-mile section of the river is a joint project by the city and corps. The cost will also be shared, with the corps providing about $20 million.
Kiser also is chairman of the city's Flood Plain Committee, an advisory group that includes business and property owners along the river.
Among other things, the project has been delayed by changes in federal regulations and environmental laws, delays in federal funding and changes in the plans.
Kiser knows that some city residents find the delays difficult to fathom. "If I was on the outside looking in, I would think the same thing - `How could anything take that long?' " he said.
Recently, the city halted environmental tests on property along the river until federal and state agencies determine what their standards are for cleaning up areas with potentially contaminated soil.
The tests are an example of changing regulations and the emerging concern about the environment that has affected the project, he said.
"If it had been built in the 1970s and 1980s, there would have been little or no concern for environmental issues," Kiser said.
City officials have tried to move rapidly but they have encountered hurdles, he said. "We have done everything we could do to proceed as quickly as possible and still look out for the interests of the city," Kiser said.
If the city had bought the property along the river before making the environmental tests, he said, it might have faced lawsuits later for environmental damages.
"Council members were ready to build it in 1989, but decided that we should deal with these environmental issues and the city's liability," Kiser said.
Despite the long delay, council members give good marks to Kiser for overseeing the project.
"Kit is pretty conservative, and he's not going to get the city into trouble," Councilman James Harvey said. "He's pretty sharp, and he's getting the job done."
Councilwoman Elizabeth Bowles said the city has done everything it can to speed up the project. "My feeling is that Kit is a whiz who is very professional and knowledgeable in working with council, the corps and others on this project."
Kiser is the only city official who has worked on the project since it was proposed in the early 1970s. Three city managers have come and gone in that time - Julian Hirst, Byron Haner and Bern Ewert. Bob Herbert is the fourth city manager who has tried to keep the project alive.
The project also has taken its toll on congressmen and senators.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, who took office in January, is the third congressmen in the 6th District who has worked with city officials on the plan. He was preceded by Caldwell Butler and Jim Olin, who helped the city deal with the corps and other federal officials.
Harry Byrd and William Scott were Virginia's senators when Roanoke officials began working on the project.
And the Corps of Engineers has gone through five or six district engineers in the Wilmington, N.C., district that has prepared the flood-reduction plans.
Kiser, 49, has outlasted them all.
He doesn't know whether to laugh or cry about it, but he remains hopeful that at least part of the plan will be built.
The project is a far cry from what once was envisioned.
In the late 1970s, the corps' engineers developed a plan for a series of dams upstream in Montgomery County that would have provided the most protection for the Roanoke Valley.
But the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors vetoed the dams, and the engineers went back to the drawing board.
They developed a plan for widening the channel of 16.5 miles of the river in Roanoke, Salem, Vinton and Roanoke County. But Salem, Vinton and the county decided not to participate because they said the costs exceeded the benefits to them. The project was then scaled down to a 10-mile section of the river within the city.
Kiser is convinced that the project can reduce flood damages.
He knows the danger of flooding personally. In the record 1985 flood, Kiser and several other city officials were rescued by helicopter from the roof of the sewage treatment plant, which was surrounded by flood waters.
A small part of the project has been built since the 1985 flood: a floodwall at the treatment plant and an early flood-warning system, which includes gauges upstream in creeks and the river.
During a flood last April, city officials gave several hours of warning. "Even if we never build the rest of the project, we have already benefited from it," Kiser said.