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SPECIAL REPORTS
Age, upkeep raise doubts about flood protection
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built HuntingtonÕs floodwall between 1938 and 1943. The concrete section is seven miles long, while the earthen levee in the West End is four-and-a-half miles long.
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HUNTINGTON -- Steve Riggs doesn't have to give you a tour of Huntington's floodwall and its 17 pump stations to express his concerns about their aging condition.
In his cramped office at the floodwall division on 3rd Avenue, he picks up a dusty, black book, its binding tattered from almost 65 years of use.
The book is not a relic that Riggs keeps around the office to remind himself how his predecessors once ran things. It's the current operating manual for the Fourpole Creek and Krauts Creek pump stations, which protect thousands of homes and businesses in the creek basins from flooding.
"You can see by the yellowing of the pages that it looks like the Constitution," says Riggs, the floodwall superintendent.
With floodwaters breaching and infiltrating levees along the Mississippi River in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, Riggs and others are beginning to wonder if Huntington's floodwall and its pump stations can withstand a severe flood.
Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which inspects the floodwall annually, acknowledge there are wear-and-tear issues. But they remain confident the floodwall and its pump stations would respond sufficiently when called upon.
"There was no condition that I observed that could be reasonably expected to preclude the project from functioning during the next flood event," Corps program manager Dave Humphreys said last week regarding his most recent inspection of the floodwall in August 2007.
City officials who maintain the floodwall, however, aren't so sure.
"People have to understand that we're living in a Tupperware bowl and we're pumping it out with equipment that was commissioned in the 1940s," says Chuck Cornett, Huntington's public works director. "It's the most important piece of infrastructure in this town, but it's the most neglected."
Maintenance concerns
The floodwall, earthen levee and pump stations were built by the Corps of Engineers during the five years that followed the 1937 flood, which crested in Huntington at 69.45 feet. Flood stage is 50 feet.
Cornett's and Riggs' apprehensions center on the pump stations' outdated parts and what they say is a lack of preventive maintenance. The floodwall division has nine employees, including Riggs. Two of the workers are dedicated to maintaining Harris Riverfront Park, while another four are responsible for mowing the four-and-a-half-mile long earthen levee most of the year.
"We don't have enough people to do a routine check on everything like it should be," Riggs said.
Riggs cited an incident in March as an example of why the pump stations need more attention. The Fourpole Creek pump station was inoperable for more than a week because a switch that prevents high-voltage levels from damaging the motors broke.
"We probably could have operated the pumps without the switch if we needed to, but it would have been really scary," Riggs said. "We would be running a real high risk of damaging the motors."
The pump stations worry Carolyn Chambers, whose Enslow Park home is in the Fourpole Creek basin.
"We talk about these pump stations all the time, and the city has been telling us for years that they are fine," she said. "Anyone who lives over here has that in the back of their mind during a hard rain."
Asked how confident he is that the pump stations would operate at their full capacity during a severe flood, Cornett responded, "I'm not answering that question."
Cornett also is concerned about the preparedness of city workers to install aluminum flood gates in the floodwall's openings. The floodwall has 45 gate openings, but 15 are currently closed for various reasons, Riggs said. The last time the city had to install flood gates because of high water was in 1997.
Seventy-two aluminum beams were stolen in late 2003 and weren't replaced until 2005. Riggs said the floodwall division now conducts routine checks at the storage houses where the beams are kept. The storage houses also have been fortified.
Asked how he would characterize the city's preparedness to close the gate openings during a flood, Cornett said, "We're prepared to panic. If the river starts coming up, we'll start responding. We'll have our workers and equipment ready and hope for the best."
Though the floodwall division only has nine employees, there is a call-out list containing the names of 52 workers from other city departments who would help install flood gates. However, they have little or no training with installing the gates.
Federal law requires the city conduct a closure exercise at each gate opening at least once every three years, but the Corps of Engineers does not have authority to impose fines if the city does not do it, said Peggy Noel, chief public affairs officer for the Corps' Huntington District office.
Riggs said the city has not performed a closure exercise in the 18 months that he has been floodwall superintendent. It's likely been several years since the last exercise was conducted, Riggs said. When he took over the position of superintendent, the "cherry picker" vehicle that's needed to install aluminum beams on the top of the flood gate openings was broken down. It has since been repaired, he said.
Riggs said he hopes to have a closure exercise sometime this fall.
"It's not brain surgery to put up the gates, but it requires a lot of labor," Riggs said. "It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle."
Tougher inspections coming
Concerns about the floodwall have caught the attention of Jim Ashworth, a retired civil engineer who worked at the Corps of Engineers' Huntington District office for 30 years. He now works part time for the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a mitigation officer and is a member of the Huntington Sanitary Board.
"There's always a high level of despair in the towns I have visited that have been hit by flooding," Ashworth said. "With a town like Huntington that has shrunk economically, it would shrink even faster if it was damaged by flooding.
"It wouldn't be the straw that broke the camel's back. It would be the bale of hay that broke the camel's back."
The floodwall needs to be addressed from two angles, Ashworth said. First, there should be a detailed analysis of the floodwall and its pump stations to reveal deficiencies and the costs associated with fixing them, he said. Secondly, more money needs to be earmarked for the floodwall division's budget, he said. The division's budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is $576,479.
"The city is collecting money for floodwall protection through the municipal fee, but it's rolled into the general fund like everything else and has lost its identity," Ashworth said. "We just can't continue to let year-by-year political decisions govern how much money we put into our infrastructure."
The Corps gave the floodwall a rating of "minimally acceptable" during its last walk-through inspection in August 2007. That means it has minor deficiencies that will not seriously impair its functionality during the next flood, said Humphreys, the Corps program manager who inspected the floodwall.
"The annual inspection is like a quick trip to the doctor," Humphreys said. "It involves visiting all of the pump stations, looking at the floodwall joints and the condition of the concrete and checking for vegetation encroachment, sediment cracking and erosion."
The Corps is expected to conduct more rigorous inspections of the floodwall every five years beginning in 2011. The five-year inspections will be in addition to the annual inspections.
"The five-year inspections will consist of hydrological, electrical, structural, mechanical and geotechnical engineers who will study the floodwall and the levee in detail and assess any conditions that may be problematic," said Steve Spagna, levee safety program manager for the Corps' Huntington District office.
The five-year inspections are part of a nationwide effort of the Corps to inventory flood-reduction projects and assess their condition, Spagna said.
The floodwall is not the only flood-reduction project that the Corps has built to protect Huntington, Noel said. Since the historic 1937 flood, the Corps has built 39 flood-reduction dams upriver from Huntington on tributaries of the Ohio River in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
"We are providing basically a 500-year protection," Noel said. "That means on any given day, you have a one-in-500 chance that you will be flooded."
But those figures refer to the depth of the '37 event and the floodwall was designed to protect Huntington from floodwaters that go 3 feet higher. That, Noel says, decreases the odds of a flood on any given day to one in 1,000.
"However, there is no guaranteed safety," Noel said. "Floodwalls and levees reduce risk, not eliminate. We cannot control Mother Nature, and if the water exceeds the design capacity of the project, the risk for flooding exists."
