Cd'A seawall going up
<p>Coeur dÕAlene city street worker Andy Edmondson uses a track hoe to unearth the concrete footings for a seawall that is part of a flood control system that was built in 1940. Beth Taylor, left, works with Don Houk and Aman Sterling to clear the footings so the wall can be erected on Monday.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - The seawall was built along the north shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene in 1940, and has been in storage for most of the time since then.
That will change Monday when the city begins erecting it again for an inspection by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The wall is part of a flood control system that stretches 1.5 miles along the shoreline from First Street and Lakeside Avenue to Harbor Center.
"The only time I can find that it was ever erected was in 1959," said Tim Martin, with the city's streets department. Even then, he said, he isn't sure why it was erected.
The seawall was built after a major flooding event hit the city in 1933 which surged the level of the lake up to 2,139.3 feet above sea level.
Congress later passed the Flood Control Act of 1938 and appropriated $308,000 to build a flood control system in Coeur d'Alene, Spokane and St. Maries.
The project was led by the U.S. War Department, which is now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They contracted it out to Sather & Sons, which began construction on the project in September of 1940.
The concrete seawall that stretches the entire length of City Beach and eventually tapers off into the earthen dike along Rosenberry Drive is actually a footing for the wall. Once it is erected, the wall is designed to protect the city up to a lake level of 2,144 feet above sea level.
But the flood control system doesn't stop there. The dike transitions into a sheet pile wall where the old DeArmond Mill sat and that wall ends near Harbor Center, just south of the Highway 95 Bridge.
The Army Corps of Engineers kept the seawall certifications up to date since it was built, but recently that agency has stopped doing re-certifications altogether. Now it's the city's responsibility to get it done, said Kim Harrington, a city engineer who is charge of the project.
They have hired Ruen Yeager & Associates as a third-party to help get the system re-certified. Harrington said before they can certify the system, they need to see the seawall go up.
"I am kind of excited to see it go up," she said. "We are going to get started on it at 7 a.m. Monday morning."
The certification process is what led the Army Corps of Engineers to recommend removal of 500 trees along the levee on the North Idaho College Beach last year. That issue has not been resolved yet, Harrington said.
"There certainly are going to be trees that have to go," she said, adding that so far they have only had to remove one.
The city has been clearing debris and brush, installing pedestrian trails, repairing concrete deficiencies and they even hauled in 10 tons of sand to stabilize the concrete wall along City Beach.
Harrington said the city has generated a list of other maintenance projects that the city will complete over the next couple of years.
The city will list those projects as part of a process to get conditional approval from FEMA. They intend to apply for that approval in November, she said.
If the city doesn't receive FEMA certification, residents in the Fort Grounds neighborhood could be required by their mortgage companies to purchase flood insurance.