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About The independent. (Vernonia, Or.) 1986-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 3, 2008)
Page 2 The INDEPENDENT, January 3, 2008 The INDEPENDENT Published on the first and third Thursdays of each month by The Independent, LLC, 725 Bridge St., Vernonia, OR 97064. Phone/Fax: 503-429-9410. Publisher Clark McGaugh, clark@the-independent.net Editor Rebecca McGaugh, rebecca@the-independent.net Assoc. Editor Noni Andersen, noni@the-independent.net Year in Review From page 1 July 6 – Washington Grade School Principal Aaron Miller cited for marijuana possession, board does not dismiss him. July 7 – Stub Stewart State Park grand opening. July 12 – 47J new board members, Tim Bamburg and Greg Kintz, sworn in. Aug. 6 – City Recorder Kate Conley’s position eliminat- ed by new job description. Council approves Kline’s latest budget changes. Mayor Harrison announces she’s starting process to change Park Drive to Shirlee’s Way. Sept. 1 – $11.50 temporary water rate increase goes into effect. Sept. 17 – Joann Glass hired to fill new Administrative & Financial Services Manager/City Recorder position. Sept. 19 – West Oregon Electric Cooperative announces rate increase. Oct. 1 – Kline says new Chart of Accounts being used and hopes to have three month expenditure reports for next meeting. Oct. 15 – Harrison announces “Kline has decided to resign.” Kline had problems with the new financial software so no expenditure reports ready. Mayor Harrison acuses Clark McGaugh of telling lies. Council holds illegal executive session to discuss ‘what to do’ about Clark McGaugh. Nov. 8 – 47J board told WGS basement won’t be used this year and accepts resignation of board member Angie Rhoades. Nov. 12 – Storm causes power outage lasting most of day. Nov. 13 – Downtown speed limit changed to 20 mph. Nov. 19 – Kline tells council he will provide financial information after the auditor’s visit on Dec. 3. Dec. 3 – Major flooding (Flood of 2007) after more than 10 inches of rain falls in less than 24 hours. Dec. 6 – Mayor Harrison announces at Flood Town Hall meeting that City Administrator Kline is unavailable so City Planner Aldie Howard is now the Emergency Interim City Administrator. Dec. 18 – Council agrees, with some misgivings, to keep Kline on part-time to handle finances, budget and public works while Aldie Howard acts as City Planner and Interim City Administrator. Ike Says… By Dale Webb, member Nehalem Valley Chapter, Izaak Walton League I hope all is well with everybody; we have had a tough end to the 2007 year. Many of us never thought that we would ever have another flood like the one in 1996, al- though it was always in the back of our minds that it could happen again. Some of us realized it could be worse, too, not a pleasant thought to say the least. For many peo- ple in the Vernonia area the flood of 2007 was the worst ever, but in fact it was not, when con- sidering the entire Nehalem basin as a whole. Yes, locally the flood waters were higher, but down at Foss where a stream gauge has been recording data for 68 years, it was not. Looking at the historical data it appears the 2007 flood will actually rank third in the records. The data for 2007 is still provisional and could change. The flood of 1996 had a gauge height of 29.56 feet and a flow of 71,000 cubic feet per second. The flood of 2007 had an estimated gauge height of 24.8 feet and recorded flow of around 41,900 cfs. It appears that the flood of January 9th, 1990, beat the last flood ever so slightly with a gauge height of 25.07 feet and a flow of 42,000 cfs. Many may ask, how can this be when the wa- ter in my house was higher than the ’96 event? Well the answer is not simple; there are many factors that can influence how a flood affects the surrounding environment. One of those factors is how fast the water event unfolds; the 2007 flood was mainly driven by rain fall, enormous amounts of rain fall. According to the upper Ne- halem USGS stream gauge near Clear Creek, we received around four inches of rain on De- cember 2, and six inches of rain on December 3. Throw in another accumulated inch from the 1st and 4th and some snow in the higher elevations and you had the flood of 2007. The flood of ’96 was different in that our area had a lot more snow and the 8 inches of rain was spread out over four days. The flood of ’96 was also a more wide-spread event, probably because of snow melt, that affected the whole of Oregon, not just the coastal regions. Many have claimed that the flood of 2007 was more like a flash flood and that might be a good description, the waters rose at an incredible rate of close to .4 of a foot per hour over approximately 35 hours. The Clear Creek gauge topped out at 18.59 height; I consider 10 feet to be the beginning of low land flooding. The river normally runs 4.5 - 5 feet during the winter. So, was the way the weather hit us the only rea- son Vernonia got hit so hard? Probably not. There continue to be changes to the forest lands around us, changes that may have an ef- fect on the stream flows in the Nehalem River and Rock Creek. Looking at the last 10 most sig- nificant flood events in the Nehalem basin, they have all occurred since 1964, the three worst Please see page
