The flood waters have receded, but the Nisqually delta’s troubles have not

When the Willards moved into their Nisqually delta dream home, it was the turning of a new page in their story.

Brian and Leila Willard say they told their three kids, between the ages of 6 and 12, that this was it: After years of frequent moving and Brian Willard’s medical retirement from the Army, they were settled.

The single-story home on the 11400 block of Sixth Avenue Southeast checked every box of what they wanted: mature fruit trees in the yard, close to the kids’ schools, new appliances, no renovations needed to make it accessible for Willard, who uses a wheelchair — the list goes on.

“Everything about it was perfect,” Leila Willard said while standing in the foyer of the home Monday.

But, about a year later, the Willards are no longer living in their dream home — they’re staying with “a generous host family.”

The Willards were among the 700 to 1,000 people who had to evacuate in early February, when, after an exceptionally wet January, Tacoma Power released water from the LaGrande Dam on the Nisqually River upstream and the river breached its banks.

Flood waters entered the Willard’s home and rose to about 8-10 inches throughout.

Volunteers mucked out and stripped the Willard’s house for a week, the Willards say, and now they’re busy getting quotes for the work it’ll take to get their house back: about $6,000 to redo the crawlspace, $6,500 for the heating — and on Monday, contractors were there working on quotes for new flooring, walls, and insulation.

“Our entire life was flipped upside-down in the matter of a day ... more like a couple hours,” Brian Willard told The Olympian. “And it’s not just our lives, it’s our kids lives. My daughter, who has special needs — she digressed in areas where we spent so much time working on. ... The level of impact is beyond just the walls.”

How the floodwaters rose

Olympia saw its third-wettest January on record this year, according to the National Weather Service in Seattle.

On Jan. 28, Tacoma Power announced it would begin releasing water from its LaGrande Dam upstream on the Nisqually River. With the initial release of 6,200 cubic feet of water per second, Thurston County Emergency Management expected minor flooding in farm and pasture land.

Between Jan. 28 and Feb. 8, Thurston County Emergency Management notified residents living along the Nisqually about changes in the dam’s release eight times, according to county documents.

At the height of the alerts on Feb. 6, the utility announced it planned to increase its release to 17,000 cfs — though, in the end, the release reportedly peaked around 15,000 cfs. The average flow of the dam is 1,200 cfs, according to Thurston County Emergency Management.

Thurston County Sheriff’s deputies began knocking on doors in the delta and handing out evacuation notices. River water began to enter homes and render roads impassable. Responders eventually had to rescue some residents who hadn’t evacuated.

American Red Cross opened a shelter in Lacey, which housed between one and three people per night between Feb. 6 and 11, according to county data.

The damage done

By Feb. 9, flood waters were receding and Thurston County Emergency Management officials lifted the evacuation advisory. The same day, county health officials announced residents in the area should boil their drinking water due to the risk of well water contamination.

Crews with the Washington Conservation Corps (WCC), an Americorps program within the Department of Ecology, began delivering water donated to the county, along with information packets. They conducted damage assessments, removed debris, and helped residents muck out and gut their homes.

In recent weeks, county Emergency Management staff has been working with the state to assess damages to property and infrastructure in a process that could potentially, eventually lead to financial help through a federal disaster proclamation.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and state damage assessment teams have validated the total infrastructure damage for agencies in Thurston County at more than $2.6 million. Most of those costs come from Olympia, where a tree fell on a pedestrian bridge during the deluge, breaking it along with a sewage pipe and water pipe underneath.

Thurston County Emergency Management found 14 homes had major damage, 40 had minor damage, and 76 were “affected” in the flood, Thurston County Emergency Services director Kurt Hardin wrote in an email to The Olympian.

An example of an “affected” home is one that had flooding on just its property.

Those counts include citizen-reported damage and assessments done by American Red Cross, WCC, and Thurston County Emergency Management, Hardin wrote. Federal and state assessment teams finished validating individual damages last week, Hardin said, but hadn’t given the county an update yet.

The state will compile damages from across the state related to the winter storm, and Gov. Jay Inslee would need to submit a request for a declaration, Hardin said. From that point, FEMA would have some time to respond.

A declaration that results in financial help for individuals is “very challenging” to get, Hardin told the County Commission recently.

“An example would be the wild-land fires in 2014 and 2015 in eastern Washington, where we had several hundred homes that were destroyed ... burned to the ground without insurance,” Hardin said. “We did not get an individual assistance declaration for those.”

A federal public assistance disaster declaration, though, could open up a competitive grant program that offers a capped amount of funding for projects to mitigate the impact of future disasters, Hardin said — such as elevating homes or buying out property.

Calls for legal action

Brian Willard and a handful of other Nisqually delta residents have testified at county commission meetings since the flood, sharing their stories of displacement.

Some residents, the Willards included, are calling for legal action against Tacoma Power, saying it is liable for damages. County Commissioner Gary Edwards, who represents the district that includes the flooded area, has echoed those calls.

“I would like to pursue legal action that would benefit the citizens,” Edwards said at a recent meeting. “Most citizens don’t have the wherewithal to go up against these big, corporate entities, and I think it’s our responsibility to represent the citizen.”

The county Prosecuting Attorney’s Office is researching the potential for legal action and will bring that information to commissioners in an executive session, County Manager Ramiro Chavez told The Olympian.

“I think we need to exercise prudence on this ... to make sure we cover all the bases we can, to make an informed decision,” Chavez said.

At a Feb. 25 county commission meeting, Chavez shared an email chain between he and David Troutt, Natural Resources Director at the Nisqually Indian Tribe, that offered a different perspective on the February events.

In the email, Troutt writes that Tacoma Power did “an outstanding job of managing within their constraints to minimize flood impacts while also balancing their license obligations.”

Troutt spoke to several impacts of the flooding in a phone interview with The Olympian.

One example: the return of chum salmon in 2019 was “disastrous,” he said, and whatever fish succeeded in spawning were significantly affected by this flood. The water moved gravel, disturbed nests, and deposited sediment on top of them.

It raises the possibility that future returns could be even worse, he said, but Tacoma Power did what they could.

The City of Tacoma, he said, actually reduced potential flooding by about 25%. Peak inflow into Tacoma Power’s reservoir was just over 20,000 cfs, he said — by the time it made it past the dam, it was at 15,000 cfs.

“Without a dam, the flooding would’ve been a lot worse,” Troutt said. Nisqually Tribe is not going to pursue litigation.

After the email exchange was presented, Commissioner Tye Menser sounded unenthusiastic about a future lawsuit.

“Unless there’s something substantially in error in this report from the Nisqually Tribe, I’m not going to be interested in pursuing litigation,” he said.

Tacoma Power’s perspective

Tacoma Power did not wish to comment on the possibility of legal action. But staff did provide answers to a list of The Olympian’s questions via email and filled in context around its decision-making.

Tacoma Power’s Nisqually River Project consists of the Alder Dam, LaGrande Dam, and Alder Lake. The 7-mile Alder Lake is created by Alder Dam and used for recreation; about 2 miles downstream, LaGrande Dam forms a small reservoir that isn’t publicly accessible.

Tacoma Power’s 40-year license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) provides the project “is to be operated for the stated purposes of maintaining downstream flows for the betterment of fisheries and the environment,” according to a prepared fact sheet from Todd Lloyd, director of resource operations and trading.

It also requires Alder Lake be maintained at “nearly full levels” in the summer, for recreation, he wrote. So, it has to balance those requirements.

Unlike some hydro projects that are built for flood control, FERC didn’t impose those requirements on the Nisqually River Project, the fact sheet reads. Lowering Alder Lake to make storage space for floodwaters could “jeopardize license requirements.”

When a series of storms brought heavy rains to the area late last year, Tacoma Power’s generators started releasing water at maximum capacity, according to the utility. And, in late January, it started releasing additional water behind Alder Dam to make space for incoming rain in the forecast.

When the big storm hit Feb. 6, Tacoma Power used that space at Alder Lake for some of the increased flows to reduce flooding downstream. Like Troutt wrote in his email to Chavez, Tacoma Power estimates flows would’ve been 25% higher without the storage at Alder Lake.

“In spite of Alder Lake’s relatively small size, the team worked tirelessly to maximize the use of reservoir storage to reduce downstream flooding, and conditions in the area would have been much worse without their efforts,” Lloyd wrote.

Lloyd heads a team of four people, plus two more on call, that makes decisions about when flows are released, according to Tacoma Public Utilities spokesperson Monika Sundbaum.

The Nisqually wasn’t the only river that experienced flooding during the February storms.

“Our data indicates that 13 other rivers experienced flooding, including rivers that are downstream of regulated flood-control facilities,” Lloyd wrote. “... The Nisqually River upstream of Alder Lake also exceeded flood stage. The compounding effect of the series of storms was the cause of the flooding experienced around the region.”

What’s next: Community engagement, legal analysis, rebuilding

Sundbaum said Tacoma Power is planning a public outreach and education campaign regarding dam operations later in 2020.

Meanwhile, in addition to researching the potential for legal action, the Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office will also look into whether the county commission has the ability to waive fees, such as the fee for water testing, in extenuating circumstances like this, Chavez said.

A community meeting is planned where key stakeholders such as county agencies, the United Way of Thurston County, American Red Cross, and Thurston County Food Bank will provide information and have community services available. Emergency Services director Hardin said Tacoma Power will be invited, but the county will not be prepared to talk about any potential litigation.

Community meeting information

• When: March 24, 2020, at 6:30 p.m.

• Where: River Ridge High School; 350 River Ridge Drive SE, Olympia

• Who: Residents who have been impacted and/or have questions regarding the recent flood

For the Willards, they just hope to move back into their home. They’re grateful for the help they’ve received — which includes donations through their GoFundMe page, pro bono work from local businesses, and some financial help through the local veterans services hub. But the costs to rebuild still blur their timeline.

“We’d hope to be living back in our house,” said Brian Willard when asked what the ideal year would look like. “It could take six months, it could take two years. We don’t know. It’s funding. Who’s got $100,000 to spare?”

How you can help

Legal action or no legal action, families such as the Willards need to rebuild. Others have nowhere to go. But the needs of the Nisqually delta right now are taking a backseat to the threat of an outbreak of COVID-19, the illness caused by a novel coronavirus, in Washington state.

“We’ve moved on as a county,” Board of County Commissioners Chair John Hutchings said last week. “On to COVID-19. And the flood victims are still victimized, they’re still suffering, they’re still sheltering, they’re still gathering food and appliances. They’re still very much in need.”

The United Way of Thurston County (UWTC) activated its Emergency Assistance Fund a few weeks ago and has been using it to pay for vouchers that allow displaced residents to stay at a local hotel free of charge.

In total, 13 families made up of 38 individuals have required long-term emergency shelter assistance, Chris Wells, executive director of UWTC, told The Olympian last week. The goal is to give people shelter until they can return home or find a safe place to stay.

The vouchers are issued for seven hotel nights at a time, then recipients go back to the Community Action Council of Lewis, Mason & Thurston Counties (CAC), which is managing the distribution of the fund, to determine if they need another voucher, Wells said.

The majority of families sought shelter in the first two weeks after the water receded, she said, but four were just approved for a fourth week of assistance.

The emergency fund had roughly $42,000 remaining from the last time it was activated, according to Wells, and grew to $53,000 from donations after the flood.

So far the CAC has paid about $38,000 to the hotel, for which UWTC will be invoiced.

“We want to be in a position to help people as long as people need it,” Wells said. “But we do need the support of the community.”

Donations to the Emergency Assistance Fund can be made online at https://www.unitedway-thurston.org/eaf.