Flooding and Washington's Infrastructure

Steve Scher
01/16/2009 at 9:00 a.m.

Last year, flooding in the Chehalis River Basin trapped Washington residents. I–5 was shut down for days. The scene played out again last week. What's to blame? Just Mother Nature? Or infrastructure? Logging? What changes need to be made to highways and levees? Is change even possible when the state is financially strapped? What policies need to change? We look at flooding and the problems behind it, on Weekday.

Plus, the weekend weather forecast with Cliff Mass.

Guest(s)

Ted Buehner is the warning coordination meteorologist of the National Weather Service forecast office in Seattle.

Tim Browning is the mayor of Centralia. He's a member of the Chehalis River Basin Flood Authority, which had its first meeting of the year yesterday. He also owns a packaging and shipping business in Centralia, Postnet.

Laura Orr is the project manager for the Twin Cities Flood Damage Reduction Project through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Seattle office.

Gordon White is the Department of Ecology's floodplain manager.

Paula Hammond manages the Washington State Department of Transportation, which maintains and builds the state's highways. She has worked for the department for 29 years and is a professional engineer. She reports to Governor Chris Gregoire.

David Montgomery is a geomorphologist at the University of Washington's Department of Earth and Space Sciences. He studies how forces like erosion shape the Earth, and has studied flood prone areas from the Skokomish River to as far as India. Last year, he testified on how logging is related to landslides in Southwest Washington at a state legislative hearing committee. He recently won a MacArthur genius grant and is currently on sabbatical in Switzerland.