Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511060120
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The city's flood-control project - the one it seems we've been hearing about since our grandparents' day, the one Roanokers have voted to spend millions on, the one that still isn't built - won't do a thing to stop the next 100-year deluge.
"If there's a flood like 1985, all bets are off," said Kiser, Roanoke's director of utilities and operations. "Whether you believe in Mother Nature or God or whatever, eventually you have no power. None."
Not even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the same folks who built such hydrological marvels as the Hoover Dam, can prevent another monster flood along the Roanoke River.
Nor will the project stop minor flooding along the dozens of streams, such as Lick Run and Mason Creek, that drain the mountains around us.
The project will, however, spare businesses and homeowners along the Roanoke River the hassle and expense of dealing with the smaller floods that hit with frustrating regularity - 1972, 1976, 1978, 1992.
If it ever gets built, that is, which some longtime Roanokers are beginning to doubt.
"We've been working on this for 25 years and haven't put the first shovel in the ground," said Ed Wheeler, owner of a coin laundry that's been flooded several times and who sits on a flood-plain advisory committee.
Back in the late 1970s, the corps unveiled ambitious flood-control plans that included huge dams in Shawsville, Ironto and Glenvar. The dams would provide electricity and keep flood waters from pummeling downstream communities, such as Roanoke. The dams also would have put 8,000 acres in Montgomery County under water, and the Board of Supervisors said, flat-out, no.
The corps dropped the dams and limited the project to the Roanoke Valley. Then, Roanoke County and Salem withdrew, leaving the city on its own. Hemmed in by the railroad tracks, industries and steep hills, the corps' only option was to deepen the channel, widen it where the terrain allowed, and build a few berms for added protection at key spots.
Then, a tiny fish called the Roanoke logperch, which happened to be an endangered species, was found in the river. Dredging the channel would destroy its habitat. That left the berms and some riverbank excavation as the only flood-control options.
Enthusiasm for the project dwindled - until the skies darkened on Nov. 4, 1985. No one had seen anything like it. The water rose so fast that people were trapped on their roofs or swept from their vehicles. Ten people died. Whole sections of town were under water - 23 feet in some places - and property damage totaled in the millions.
Kiser had gone to the wastewater treatment plant to pile sandbags and work the pumps. "Sixteen of us got trapped over here. This whole thing was a lake," Kiser said recently as he showed visitors around the plant. He and the others had to be rescued by helicopter.
The plant shut down for nine days, and it wasn't back to full operation for six months - at a cost of $3 million to the city.
The flood of '85 "got people's attention," Kiser said.
Since then, we've taken several measures to try to tame the floods.
Roanoke County has spent $3 million, with another $1 million slated, to maintain storm drains, and is spending another $4.5 million to address problems of storm water inundating the sanitary sewer system.
Last year, the county designated a river overlay corridor, which includes stricter zoning requirements to protect water quality and provide some degree of flood control.
Further, the county requires new developments to have flood-control provisions for a 25-year flood, rather than the 10-year standard, and increased building setbacks along streams.
Salem has not undertaken any flood-control measures along the Roanoke River, Planning Director Joe Yates said. The corps' proposal would have provided minimum flood reduction in the city, or actually increased water levels, Yates said.
Instead, the city improved its emergency services plan and cleared debris from streams. "But there's only a certain amount of stuff you can do," Yates said. "We're in a valley. [Flooding] is a given."
Vinton has built a detention pond and new drain pipes in Gladetown, for $1 million, and continues to appropriate about $35,000 a year for townwide improvements.
And in Roanoke, workers have installed storm drains along Williamson Road, at a cost of $15 million, and replaced bridges along Peters Creek, cleared underbrush, widened the channel and built two detention basins, for $4 million.
The city has also spent $2.9 million on storm drain improvements and a detention basin at Statesman Industrial Park.
As for the long-awaited Roanoke River flood-control project, the first two phases have been completed, beginning with addition of several rain gauges to warn of a major flood. The system won't predict smaller floods, however, like the one that soaked homes in Garden City earlier this year, Kiser said.
In addition, the city included specially designed flood doors at Roanoke Memorial Hospital in the project, and built a berm between the river and the city's wastewater treatment plant, which is designed to withstand a 70-year flood. Although a 100-year flood still would do some damage at the plant, it wouldn't be nearly as much as before the improvements were made, Kiser said.
But the project's third phase has gotten snagged on enough legal, financial and environmental hooks in the past few years to possibly sink it for good.
Under a 1990 agreement, the corps will pay 75 percent of the project, as long as it yields at least $1 in benefit for every $1 of cost. (The city's share includes the cost of right-of-way acquisition, waste disposal and environmental assessments.) There's little chance the city could, or would, foot the entire $36.3 million bill for the channelization.
When the agreement was signed, the project would yield $1.17 in benefit for every $1 in cost - not a whole lot of wiggle room. As the project gets scaled back and the environmental problems grow, that ratio could shrink.
"In any project like this, the environmental issues can kill the cost-benefit ratio," said Bren Huggins, an environmental consultant who has four business clients involved in the flood-control project.
Here's the situation:
The corps plans to gouge out sections of riverbank along the river's 10-mile route through the city. This will lower the river level - 41/2 feet in some cases - and allow floodwaters to spread out and slow down, reducing the chance of the river jumping its banks, or, if it does, reducing the destructive force of rushing water. The corps will also build berms to protect certain structures, and allow some natural areas, like Smith Park, to flood.
But before acquiring property rights along the bank, the city checked all 267 parcels for pollution to avoid future liability. And, indeed, it found elevated levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium and other contaminants at about half the sites along the industrial corridor.
"Every city that has a river running through it, the banks are contaminated, I can guarantee that," Wheeler said.
The Roanoke Industrial Center, site of the former American Viscose plant, is so contaminated - it's a potential Superfund site - that Roanoke wants to drop it from the project, Kiser said. The corps has not reviewed that recommendation, project manager Wayne Bissette said.
Two companies already have had to clean up pollution after the Environmental Protection Agency reviewed the city's first round of tests and found high levels of lead. Virginia Scrap Iron & Metal Co. has finished the work, said EPA coordinator Jeffrey Dodd. Cycle Systems is still working with EPA and the corps to figure out the best way to clean up lead-tainted dirt along the riverbanks, Dodd said.
Kiser said the city plans to keep both properties, now that they're "clean," as part of the flood-control project.
The corps this summer agreed to pay most of the cleanup costs of the remaining sites, unless the levels are deemed hazardous, Kiser said. The city is conducting a special test for hazardous waste on the 48 worst properties. Kiser said preliminary indications show that two-thirds of the sites are turning up negative.
The tests are a Catch-22 for property owners. If they refuse to cooperate, the city has legal authority to force entry, Kiser said. Either way, if hazardous waste is found, "we are duty-bound to make sure you report it to [the federal Environmental Protection Agency,] or we report it to EPA," Kiser said, and the property owner is liable for cleanup.
Edward Moore, president of Walker Machine and Foundry, says his company wants to continue working with the city, and is "trying to be creative without them shooting us in the foot."
All the corps has planned at the foundry is to cut down a few trees. There's no excavation work involved, Moore said. But the city doesn't want any risk at all, and so it hasn't crossed the foundry off its list yet.
Several years ago, the foundry cleaned up petroleum that had leaked from an underground tank, and got a "clean bill of health" from the state, Moore said. But the city's consultant apparently found traces of hydrocarbons from that project, and now Moore is concerned about having to clean up more to meet stricter federal standards.
The company, forced to shut down for several weeks after the 1985 flood, would almost rather deal with the risk of another flood than the risk of an unknown environmental quagmire. "I can deal with the river. I'll put my boots on, and I'll shovel the damn stuff out from under the machines like I did before," he said.
And besides, Moore said, he and other property owners he's talked to think the project no longer is economically feasible.
There's another hitch that could drive the cost/benefit ratio "through the floor," Huggins said.
Cleaning sites to suit federal standards, most of which assume the land will be used for residences, can cost four times as much as cleaning them up for industrial or commercial use, he said.
The EPA, and several states including Virginia, are moving toward the concept of "brownfields" - in essence, recycling industrial land for future businesses rather than cleaning it to near pristine conditions.
Part of the problem, Huggins said, is that property owners can't qualify for Virginia's "brownfield" program if they're under cleanup orders from the EPA, but the EPA is seeing the test results before the property owners do. Huggins said he's talking with the city and with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to resolve the problem.
Kiser is also looking at creative solutions. He's talked with the EPA about including the value to future generations of cleaning up the riverbanks as a benefit in the cost-benefit ratio. But the corps' Bissette said his agency looks strictly at the savings of property, road and utility damage to calculate the benefits of flood control, and does not factor in such things as human lives saved, health or productivity.
Other changes since 1985 could skew the ratio as well. Several businesses have moved or are moving away from the river - Handy Dump, Evans Paints, Davis H. Elliott and Russ Co.
"I think we may not even qualify," said Read Lunsford, a commercial real estate agent who also sits on the flood plain committee. "We appear to be stuck in the mud."
Bissette said the cost-benefit ratio still hovers around 1-to-1.17, which doesn't factor in the environmental studies or relocated businesses. The corps likely will go back and reanalyze the economics once the city has figured out what it wants to do, he said.
And the city won't know what changes need to be made until all the environmental tests are in - sometime next spring, Kiser said.
by CNB