Trinity Enhancements
Delay Flood Control
11:19 PM CDT on
Saturday, March 27, 2010
By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
mlindenberger@dallasnews.com
Dallas' levees have aged as the city debated park and toll road plans. A
report due
this summer should clarify the risk.
When the Trinity River spilled out of its banks so dramatically 20 years
ago this spring, it sent a vivid reminder that the only things standing
between Dallas and a catastrophic flood were two aging earthen levees known
even then to be steadily losing their effectiveness.
Those levees have only gotten weaker as the City Council repeatedly opted
to link flood protection with a grander, more complex vision – one that
included a toll road that remains uniquely difficult to engineer and in need
of $1 billion in additional funding.
Rather than develop a simpler plan to make Dallas safer from floods,
elected leaders at every turn since 1990 instead have seen the levee
improvements they knew were needed as just one component of plans to
transform the ditchlike Trinity River with new lakes, rapids, hiking trails
and more.
Eight years after the big flood, with the levees growing less effective,
Dallas voters narrowly endorsed the city's ambitious plan. It grouped those
elements – and the controversial high-speed toll road, too – into a $246
million bond package that also would raise the levees at least two feet and
make other improvements along their 11-mile course.
But little of that work – and none of the actual levee improvements – has
been completed. Construction on most elements within the levees hasn't yet
begun.
None of the remaining work is likely to start for at least three years,
city and federal officials say; the
Army Corps of Engineers has announced it will take at least that long to
formally study how all the project's pieces fit together.
Now, as new worries over the levees' condition have halted all work
within the barriers, even some of the Trinity project's keenest advocates
concede that the sheer scope of the work inevitably has delayed
improvements.
"When we started all of this, we didn't understand just how ambitious
this project was going to be," said Trinity Commons Foundation president
Craig Holcomb, a former City Council member and longtime champion of the
Trinity project.
"The city, the corps, the FHWA [Federal
Highway Administration] – none of them had ever done anything like this
before, building parks and a toll road in the levees. It was much more
complicated than we thought it would be."
That, he said, has slowed what would otherwise have been a simpler – if
far less inspiring – levee improvement plan.
"Certainly, because we are building lakes and soccer fields and all those
things, that has caused the project to take longer," he said.
In using public money, "you really need to try to figure out what is the
best thing to do. And as our city becomes denser, we need to be able to use
the 10,000 acres between the levees for something besides flood control if
at all possible."
But he and others acknowledge – and records among more than 10,000 pages
of corps documents reviewed for this article confirm – that the Trinity
levees have been losing their effectiveness for decades, beginning years
before the 1990 flood.
By the time
Hurricane Katrina hit
New
Orleans in 2005, the corps and other local experts estimated that the
levees could be threatened by a flood only about 25 percent to 40 percent as
strong as what they had been designed to protect against when rebuilt in the
1950s.
Still, the corps' senior Trinity River project manager, Kevin Craig, said
the corps was willing to be patient because even that reduced protection was
enough to easily ward off any flood Dallas has seen since the levees were
built.
"There was not the greatest sense of immediate danger," Craig said. "So
our attitude was 'Let's get this right.' "
Failed inspection
Getting it right, though, required all parties to take their time. More
time, it turns out, than the levees were willing to give.
Last year, the corps' patience apparently ran out. It flunked the levees,
halting nearly every aspect of the Trinity River project.
The failed inspection has prompted Dallas to spend $29 million – mostly
taken from funds for other badly needed flood-protection improvements – to
assess how vulnerable the levees really are.
Mayor Tom Leppert and others haven't said how bad the news is likely to
be when the report – already behind schedule – is finally issued this
summer.
Many city leaders continue to blame the failed inspection at least in part
on efforts by the corps to insulate itself from criticism that it mishandled
New Orleans levees before Katrina. Some officials have said privately that
they remain convinced the levees are in good shape, despite corps
pronouncements.
Greg Ajermian, a former corps engineer and for 13 years a senior Trinity
River project manager for Dallas, said the city will satisfy the corps'
concerns but believes the corps has "blown things out of proportion."
Craig said in an interview that the corps simply wants to make sure the
levees are safe, though he conceded that the failed inspection was a
surprise for the city. The agency for years had rated the levees as
excellent.
It wasn't just the local inspectors who were concerned.
Nearly 20 years after the last major flood set off alarms across the
city, a team of national levee experts from the corps bluntly put the risks
in perspective in a letter to the Fort Worth district last year.
"This current information questions the ability of the system to pass the
current 100-year flood or a repeat of a May 1990 flood," wrote Dr. Monte L.
Pearson, who led the corps' national review of the Fort Worth district's
conclusions about the Dallas levees. "The ... [inspection] documents a
number of deficiencies, which appear to be degrading over the last several
decades."
200 homes flooded
Some officials who led Dallas and its Trinity River efforts in the 1990s
say there was plenty of warning from the corps that the levees were in
jeopardy, though they still believed they'd work in all but the most extreme
cases.
Steve Bartlett took office as mayor in 1991, just a year after the 1990
flood. He spent his first Saturday on the job wading through floodwaters in
the South Dallas neighborhood of Rochester Park, where another flood had
swamped more than 200 homes and claimed at least one life.
It was an early affirmation for him of the flood risks for Dallas, a
conviction he said was only heightened by corps warnings throughout his
term.
"We all heard the scary things that we were told about the levees – that
in their current conditions they could be overtopped and flood downtown and
much of the Stemmons district," Bartlett recalled. "The corps did express
their urgency [about levee improvement], and we felt the same urgency."
But instead of trying to rush through a plan to improve the levees as a
standalone effort, Bartlett said, the city spent several years combining its
needs for better flood protection with a long list of other aspirations.
"The challenge was to figure out a way to use our assets, to strengthen
them to correct our liabilities," he said. "That is what led to the concept
that the Trinity plan should be more than just flood control – that it
should be flood control, but not just flood control. ... "
Nearly two decades, and three mayors, later, the grand plans remain, but
the levees, if the corps concerns are valid, are weaker than ever.
"And yes, it's disappointing that 20 years later, that that part of it is
not funded, much less started," Bartlett said.
What's taking so long?
So what's taking so long, anyway?
The plan that eventually went to voters in 1998 emerged after hundreds of
public meetings not just on the future of the Trinity corridor but also on
the city's future.
Holcomb recalls that city officials initially considered a scaled-down
flood-control plan that involved "pouring a lot of concrete between the
levees."
After one of Bartlett's closest advisers – the late Robert Hoffman –
called for doing "more with the Trinity Corridor than just paving and make
it a concrete ditch to carry floodwater," the mayor named a top citizens
panel to look not only at flood control but at the whole corridor.
"That's how we ended up with the plan," Holcomb said.
Almost as soon as it was approved, opponents sued, saying the city hadn't
fully studied the toll road's impact on flood control and other elements of
the plan. They lost that suit.
Former journalist Laura Miller was elected mayor in 2003, determined to
kill the toll road. Instead, she expanded the parks plan to de-emphasize the
road. Many say the changes improved the plan and may have kept the project
alive.
But they slowed the process. The corps stepped in and ruled out some
proposed toll road routes, asking the Federal Highway Administration to
start another environmental review process.
And in 2007, council member Angela Hunt led a referendum aimed at
preventing a toll road from being built within the levees, citing worries
about costs and impact on the parks. Things came to a halt again.
Toll road supporters won the vote, and planning work resumed Optimism at
City Hall was high, even as concerns about toll road costs mounted
That all came to a halt last year, when the corps startled the city by
flunking the levees.
'Levees aren't sexy'
All the stops and starts were worth it, many leaders from the 1990s and
since say. For one thing, voters tend to view levee improvements like eating
organic broccoli: It's not much fun and costly to boot.
"Levees aren't sexy" Holcomb said. "What that means is from a purely
political standpoint, flood control and levees ... never had the attention
that an event like Katrina causes them to have."
Even coupled with other elements of the plan, the flood-control aspects
were contentious from the beginning, said Bartlett, now chief of a
Washington-based industry group for banks.
"The flood-control portion was a very controversial portion of the
Trinity plan, and there was no consensus to move forward," Bartlett said.
"Had we continued to simply beat our heads against the wall of whether to
spend the $300 million for flood control, we'd still be here 20 years later.
And we never would have gotten the flood control, either."
Voters narrowly approved the 1998 bond package, but flood control was
never seen as its sole purpose, especially by those who strongly favored the
road, said Sandy Greyson, who left the City Council in 2005 and helped rally
support for Hunt's ballot measure in 2007.
A June 2007 photo on one of the Trinity's levees shows how the river can
become a broad lake after heavy rains.
As for flood control, everyone knew that improving the levees was a
central aim of the project, Greyson said, but it never had the kind of
support the roads or the park ideas attracted.
"At the time," she said, "we didn't know how bad the levees were."
Weather delays
The city still doesn't know how bad the levees are. Until it does, every
major aspect of the Trinity River project is on hold.
The levee study begun last spring when the corps flunked the levees had
initially been expected to be complete by about now. But it may be delayed
until summer, city officials said. Ajermian said testing of the levees was
behind schedule because of a wetter-than-usual winter.
He said a second round of soil tests in suspected trouble spots would be
finished by summer, though City Manager Mary Suhm says the work could be
completed sooner. Then the city will be able to assess the weaknesses of the
levees and present the corps with a plan for fixing them.
But already the Federal Emergency Management Agency has said it must
assume for now that the levees no longer work.
It has begun redrawing flood-risk maps that could send flood-insurance
rates soaring if the levees aren't fixed in time. FEMA officials said it
will be two years or more before the maps are complete.
Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan, involved with the Trinity project
since its inception, estimates levee fixes will cost $50 million to $150
million, amounts others have said are likely to require a new bond election.
Toll road opponents, including council member Hunt, have begun calling
for the city to drop the road from city plans and focus first on the flood
control. Park aspects of the plan also can wait, she said.
But the city argues, much as it did during the 2007 campaign, that taking
the road out would not speed the project and would add to the city's costs,
including requiring it to build a smaller road and ramps so drivers could
enter the park.
"We're going full speed on the plan that voters approved," Jordan said
this month.
But doing so has always been a gamble of sorts, said Ajermian, and a safe
one in his view when the city asked voters in 1998 and 2007 to endorse the
city's plan to bring all the projects together within the levees.
Is it still a good bet?
"That standard for what was considered acceptable risk back then has
certainly changed," he said, noting that the federal reviews of the
projects' viability will be done in light of the continuing levee
assessments and the corps' increasing concerns."The challenge is steeper
now, because the level of risk the corps is willing to accept is lower."
TIMELINE: TRINITY RIVER AND DALLAS FLOOD CONTROL
1908– 10 to 15 inches of rain fall over three days in May. Trinity River
stretches two miles wide near downtown Dallas and every bridge across the
river at that point is destroyed, leaving Oak Cliff reachable only by boat.
Most of downtown and West Dallas are under water, and for three days the
city is completely without telephone, telegraph and rail service.
1910 – Famed landscape architect George E. Kessler begins work on massive
plan for Dallas, including the levees.
1928– Delayed by World War I, feuding factions and financial problems, work
on the levees begins. They are the second-largest public project in the U.S.
at the time, with 1,000 workers employed each day.
1942 – Heavy rains stress the levees to the extreme, but they hold. City
leaders predict a similar rain could "break the levees."
1948 – An Army Corps of Engineers report warns of the levees' deterioration,
citing three danger signs that will become familiar 60 years later: frequent
levee slides, dry and cracked soil, and problems with soil substructure that
could lead to "underseepage."
1953-60 – Corps reconstructs levees.
1968 – City agrees to take over maintenance and operation of levees.
1988 – Worried about huge increase in development plans for property near
the levees, the corps issues a final decision on new standards for
development. It says "skyrocketing" land values downtown have greatly
increased interest in development near the river.
1989 – Floods wash out homes in Rochester Park.
1990 – Big floods arrive in April, leading to urgency about improving the
levees.
1998 – Dallas voters endorse the Trinity River Plan, including levee
improvements.
2003 – The City Council approves a Balanced Vision Plan to enhance parks and
amenities and move a planned toll road to the downtown side of the river.
2006 – Corps asks Federal Highway Administration to complete a new review of
the Trinity toll road, citing concerns about flood control. Commander says
toll road "absolutely cannot happen if the structural integrity of the levee
is damaged in any way."
2007– In a rare rebuke to President George W. Bush, and a milestone for the
Trinity project, Congress overturns his veto of the $23 billion Water
Resources Development Act. The act authorized $459 million to be spent on
the Trinity project, including lakes, river changes and levee improvements.
The corps has begun studying the feasibility of the overall project, a
three-year or more process that must be completed before the money can be
appropriated.
2009 – Corps flunks the levees, prompting the city to spend $29 million to
study their problems.
2010 – At city's request, corps links the toll road review to a review of
other Trinity projects, pushing the projects out at least three years.
This summer – Results from city levees assessment expected.
SOURCES: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers records; reports to Congress; History
of the Dallas Floodway by John N. Furlong, Greg Ajemain and Tommie
McPherson, 2005.
Courtesy of the Dallas Morning News, Saturday, March 27, 2010 Edition.
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