Flood readiness test
<p>Brad Callihan, a city employee, works with Bobby Covey to drop a treated timber in place Monday while installing an extension of the seawall near the Coeur d'Alene city beach. The flood control system project is being erected to qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency certification.</p>
COEUR d’ALENE — City workers spent most of Monday resurrecting a 73-year-old seawall along the north shore of the Lake Coeur d’Alene in a effort to get its flood control system re-certified with the federal government.
The wall was built in 1940 after a 100-year flood event that surged the lake’s level to almost 11-and-half feet above its summer pool level in 1933.
Congress appropriated the money for the system that has to be re-certified periodically through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
After Hurricane Katrina destroyed a levee that protected New Orleans in 2005, FEMA order the Army Corp of Engineers to re-certify the nation’s levees.
The Corp has since relinquished its duty to certify levees and city are now charged with hiring third-party engineering firms to do the work.
Ruen Yeager & Associates is certifying the Coeur d’Alene system, and that firm asked the city to erect the seawall as part of that process. The wall is expected to be certified on Tuesday, and will be dismantled and stored again after that process.
After the wall is dismantled, the engineering firm will focus on the trees that line the levee that runs along Rosenberry Drive.
Read more in tomorrow’s Press.