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Once again, Oregon has been cut off from Washington, due to flooding in Centralia that closed I-5 by January 8. The loss of commerce for each day the highway remains closed is estimated to be in excess of $4 million. In the December 2007 flood, property damage alone in that area exceeded $1 billion.
Flooding along the I-5 corridor has occurred seven times since 1971, three times in the past four years. In 2003, Washington State received $30 million from the Nickel Funding Package (five cents added to the gas tax to fund road projects) to help fix this problem. After a 22-million-dollar study, the Washington State Department of Transportation determined that it would cost $100 million to prevent flooding by building an elaborate levy system along the Chehalis River. The state sought the additional $70 million from both federal and local sources. The additional funds were never granted, so the original $30 million was used for other projects, leaving residents and business owners in Centralia to face the next big storm without a levy.
That storm hit on January 7, 2009, and now the community is faced with millions in new damages. To make matters even worse, flooding in other parts of the state closed the other two highways linking Oregon and Washington, cutting off all ground transportation.
The bottom line: Over a billion dollars in taxpayer (FEMA) money has been spent to clean up a problem that $100 million in highway funds would have solved. Working together, state and federal agencies CAN find the funding to get the Chehalis River Basin Flood Reduction Project done before taxpayers shell out ten times the project cost in damages “again.”
