River Road Water Control Board warns county on revetments

Presenter: A long-time board member on the River Road Water Control District warns that some retaining structures along the Willamette River stopped being inspected in 2007. Introducing the public speakers Sept. 15, Lane County Commissioner Ryan Ceniga:

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga: First up, we have Caleb Crumrine:

Caleb Crumrine (River Road Water Control District): I’m here in regards to the closing of the River Road Water Control District. I was the last president and I just became president because three people resigned ahead of me. 

I was on the board for almost 20 years. And for 20 years, all we did was have two meetings a year, approve increasing the budget as much as we could, and we think now have $117,000 in the bank.

The problem is, it’s been in existence since the 1960s, and before, they would just go every year, vote to dump rock at every revetment that the Corps of Engineers told them was failing or needed rock. And so they would do that.

Well, in 2007, the Corps of Engineers quit inspecting the revetments and expected us to do that. We’re all-volunteer, we don’t have a little boat to do it, we don’t even know what we’re looking at.

And there’s also many agencies that do not allow you to put rock in the river anymore, or they don’t want you to. So the permit process alone would take all our money, just for one revetment. And we’re in charge of seven.

So for years we’ve done absolutely nothing with our tax money. I became president and just to even talk to lawyers and our attorney or our accountants were taking almost every bit of money that we were bringing in.

So I just held a meeting with our local people that were in the tax base and said,  DeFazio passed something where we’re going to get funding, but that bill needs to pass a whole ‘nother step that will probably never pass.

So we decided to hibernate the district and just not spend any money, because we were just taxing for years and years and not able to ever fix anything, because of other agencies and just, $117,000 might last one day and not fix anything.

The reason I came here today is: If you close us, nothing will change, and that’s fine.

But this is something you guys will deal with, eventually. The river will cut through revetments. It will cut off many citizens from River Road. It could even cut River Road off.

I mean, we had a lady on our district that spent hundreds of hours dealing with the (U.S. Army) Corps (of Engineers) and agencies because she lost 20 acres in 1997 of her own land. Just took it right down the river.

And that will happen at any of these seven revetments, and some of them, like I said, it will cut millions of dollars of ag and maybe just take it down the river and many citizens could lose houses.

And I mean, once they cut the revetment and it gets behind it, it’s almost worse than having a revetment, because then the river wants to stay on what’s left. So I would just say: Pay attention to it.

Presenter: Commissioner Ryan Ceniga:

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga:  The only thing I would like to add quickly is maybe adding a little bit of urgency to our revetment issues we’re having on the Willamette River. I know we’ve been to the United Front trip with (Springfield) Mayor (Sean) VanGordon multiple times, and he talks about it every time.

So, it’s something that we could probably team up with and maybe add a little urgency to that, because, I think, Mr. Crumrine had a good point.

I hear about it a lot when I go to some of our smaller community meetings and gatherings that people are really concerned watching the rocks disappearing and their land disappearing and then shifting and taking away their neighbor’s property across the river.

And I think—(The church. Harrisburg.) Yeah. I think four out of the five commissioners have revetment issues right now.

Presenter: County commissioners are warned that seven restraining structures along the Willamette haven’t been inspected in nearly 20 years, and that a failure could cut off River Road.