Once more, the concrete levees on the lower Puyallup River bent but didn’t break.

They’re old – World War I vintage. They’re substandard, according to recently revised federal guidelines. They need a fix or a replacement estimated to cost many tens of millions.

But they didn’t cause the flooding that forced evacuations in Fife, closed lanes on Interstate 5 and swamped neighborhoods south of the river.

Instead, the blame falls to smaller culprits, swollen capillaries pouring into the Puyallup Valley and the Tacoma Tideflats: Swan Creek. Wapato Creek. Clear Creek. Hylebos Creek. Each caused a measure of mayhem.

What’s more, the conditions are chronic. Another storm like the one that hit last week would likely yield the same result, according to stormwater experts and local leaders.

There are no quick fixes, they say – solutions will take time, lengthy negotiation and money.

“You have so many jurisdictions that each has a different kind of a problem,” said Puyallup City Councilman John Knutsen, who sits on a task force looking at long-term flooding solutions.

Along I-5, floodwaters from Hylebos Creek closed three lanes Thursday. The forked stream empties into Commencement Bay – but the freeway blocks the route.

“All of Hylebos has to squeeze through a rather small culvert under I-5,” said Harold Smelt, Pierce County’s surface water manager. “It doesn’t help that the area is pancake-flat and affected by the tides.”

I-5 is the state’s responsibility, Smelt said. A fix for the drainage problem will piggyback on larger construction projects such as added HOV lanes and the long-planned extension of Highway 167 into the Port of Tacoma – projects that are still in the planning and design stages.

‘WE ARE NOT AS SAFE AS WE HAD HOPED’

As the rain fell in Fife late Wednesday, emergency workers urged evacuations of housing developments north of the river, such as the Radiance community.

“We were being told that 2 extra feet of water was coming over the levee,” said Lt. Tom Thompson, Fife police spokesman. “That was our concern.”

It didn’t happen. The dire predictions of overtopped levees were mercifully overblown. Instead, the problem was standing water pooling in the lowest areas of the neighborhoods, a section of the city known locally as Oxbow.

“It looked terrible, but it really didn’t affect any of the houses or the roads,” Thompson said. “Those are low points where water just collects, and it collects all year long.”

Still, Fife leaders understand the importance of making the levees stronger and taller. Mayor Barry Johnson voiced his concerns in a prophetic column in The News Tribune last February.

“Without repair, the risk to the vital levee system that confines the river during the winter increases with each and every storm that comes through,” Johnson wrote. “We are not as safe as we had hoped.”

South of the river, the Riverside community west of Puyallup took the worst beating last week. Mobile home parks became ponds.

Again, smaller streams were to blame, according to Smelt. Clear Creek and Swan Creek feed into the Puyallup River, but when the bigger waterway runs high, tidegates along the levee snap shut. Water can’t get out – or in.

“When the Puyallup rises up to flood stage, those flapgates close – everything just fills the area up,” Smelt said.

From an engineering standpoint, the only answer is pumping excess stream water over the levee and into the Puyallup River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers looked at the possibility of a pump station, Smelt said, but decided it would cost too much.

Instead, Pierce County has opted for slowly buying property in the Riverside area, using federal disaster grants.

“The county has actually purchased large amounts of property in that area – close to a dozen homes,” Smelt said.

He expects that additional grants will become available as a result of the storm, which might allow more property acquisitions.

LOOKING AT THE LEVEES

The levees contained the flooding last week, but not by much.

Water crept up to within a foot of topping the structures in some places along the eight miles between Puyallup and the Port of Tacoma, according to Tony Fantello, stormwater, maintenance and operations manager for Pierce County Surface Water Management. It’s his job to monitor and repair the levees and even rebuild them if needed.

The levees no longer meet the federal flood control standard, which calls for a 3-foot safety margin in any 100-year flood event. In 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Agency decertified the levees, which led to an expanded flood plain area along the Lower Puyallup River in Riverside and Fife.

The decertification and flood plain mapping hasn’t been adopted by FEMA yet, but could come this year.

Pierce County did adopt the new federal flood plain maps in 2006 and instituted land-use restrictions along the Puyallup River to minimize future flood damage. The move outraged many residents who discovered they couldn’t build on their land or repair damaged homes.

Bringing the levees up to the federal standard is complicated and won’t be cheap. Local officials estimate the price tag at $100 million plus, depending on what is done.

Since last July, a task force representing 12 local governments, including the Puyallup Tribe as well as state and federal agencies, has considered the problem and a suite of possible solutions.

Smelt, who works with the coalition, said the task sounds simple: raise the levees or lower the river or do a combination of both.

The solutions range from doing nothing and hoping the levees will hold to dredging the river.

So far the task force hasn’t agreed on what to do, Smelt said, but the members are close. The end result will probably include a range of options, he added.

But doing nothing isn’t on the table, Smelt said. No action would mean continued flood threats to Interstate 5, railroad lines and the Port of Tacoma, one of the area’s major economic engines.

Homes and businesses on the lower Puyallup River would lose federal flood insurance.

“We think we are making very good progress,” Smelt said.

OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Each option has its pros and cons, Smelt said.

Dredging a river to make it deeper and able to hold more water is often mentioned by people who live near rivers as the most logical solution.

Smelt said it has environmental consequences, particularly for salmon. It is also expensive and has to be done over and over.

The Puyallup Tribe of Indians has told the task force, however, that it would consider selective dredging on the river.

Simply building higher levees means that creeks like Clark’s Creek would continue to back up and flood Riverside and parts of Puyallup because it has no way to drain into a flooded Puyallup River.

Taken off the table, Smelt said, was the option of building a new channel through the valley that would divert some flood water from the Puyallup and reduce the pressure on the levee system.

Port of Tacoma leaders opposed that idea, and the cost of buying rights of way could be high, he said.

The task force also must discuss what level of flood protection it wants. The federal standard is protection against a 100-year flood event, which means that in any year there is a 1 percent chance of such a major disaster occurring.

Smelt said perhaps the levee system should be built to protect against an even larger flood: a 250-year or a 500-year catastrophe.

The bottom line in flood control, however, is that no matter what standard is used, there will be a larger one sometime in the future.

And it may be impossibly expensive to build a levee that will never bend, break or be overtopped.

Sean Robinson: 253-597-8486

Mike Archbold: 253-597-8692

Five ideas to stop future floods

A task force of 12 regional governments is looking at solutions for chronic flooding problems. Among the options still on the table:

 • Raise the height of the River Road levee with a simple 3-foot concrete wall and rebuild the North Levy Road levee on the Fife side of the river.

 • Dredge the river below North Meridian Avenue to Commencement Bay.

 • Build setback levees in various areas to lower flood waters and reduce pressure on the levee system.

 • Increase the capacity of the Puyallup River upstream to hold more flood water by constructing setback levees.

 • Adopt land-use regulations that restrict use of flood-prone lands.