it took me, mm took me a few tries to get logged on there and it decided it was a
good time to update zoom. No fun never ends. Um,
okay, are we ready to get started? Yeah. Hey, when you are, we're recording on zoom.
Okay. Going to call this special emergency meeting of the jefferson County Board
of commissioners to order and I think I am handing it off to Willie or monty
and well, I can certainly, um, Start, I mean the
culvert, you know, a large culvert washed out at mile post 8.8 on the oil city road
at Ruby Creek, which is an area where we've had, You know, erosion back in 2015 and
16, uh, from the whole river. And the problem is sort of continue in that area. So
this culvert now is washed out as kind of a continuation of that whole process. And
yeah, right. And so the couple of residents are cut off behind
that. They live down close to mile 95 Kathy and my believe Mike is his name
Dixon and then a couple other people, I don't know, um, I guess they move their cars
to the other side of the washout before it happened, but they don't really have any
way of getting supplies to their house or maybe even crossing the creek on foot.
It's kind of rugged terrain until this gets fixed. So we'll uh, you know, mobilize
a contractor on an emergency basis, uh, to, to repair. This wouldn't
surprise me if this costs $150,000 or more to repair, but we do have a culvert that
we stock on hand emergency culvert for situations like this and we know that we'll
be able to find a contractor uh available to help us out here.
Um So we'll you know, get after this thing. Um But typically when we do this kind
of emergency work um we need an emergency declaration to allow us to
um spend that kind of money and uh do contracts without bidding and things like that.
Act fast. So that's what's going on. I could show you a couple of pictures if you're
interested. Um Yes, that's me trying to find it on google earth. How do
I share my screen again? Let me stop, let me stop. Willie from sharing. Now you'll
be able to share green button at the bottom here zoom the share screen. Let's see.
Oh their share. So can you see the email I got from Bill
Robinson showing up there? I don't know if I can make it any bigger. Um But that's
probably a 15-foot deep hole there, it's pretty wide. Um You know, that's
a four or five ft diameter culvert, the old one. Okay,
Is that the size one you have to replace it with? Well we have six ft in stock, which
is what we'll be putting in there. Nice. And uh you know there's the
road heading down towards the residents. You can see in this upper photo the The
riprap work we had to do in 2015 that goes Um downstream from here about 1000 ft.
You can see the river right along the road in 2015 past where that orange cone is,
the whole road was gone for uh at least a week. So these, you know, these
hearty souls out there on the oil city road. This isn't the first time they've been
cut off uh for a week or more, but it's, you know, not ideal. Uh
that's upstream. Looking at the creek, you see, the creek really wants to cut down
because when the river moved over against the road there, where the river is in these
photos 10 years ago, that was a giant uh pasture for cattle. And the river was 1000
ft away from the road. But now you see it's right against the road. So when it moved
over, Yeah, um um steepen, you know, the creek's path to the river becomes much
shorter. So that makes it want to steepen up. And you see, that's what's happening
here is a down cuts um to achieve the grade of
the river that is flowing into. So we'll fix this by filling up that hole essentially
with large rock like you see in the upper photo and uh and a new culvert, but it'll
take a week likely to do that work monty. Is that, is that just natural meander
that that shift of the the river running over where the pasture was, is that just
changes upstream or what's going on to cause that, I mean the whole river tends to
shift around a lot. Um and now can you see the map up there? Yeah,
and I found it on google earth, you can see where the washout is at ruby creek and
you can see where the folks live down there. Um So you can see the river runs right
against the road there. Like I said 10 years ago the river was maybe over here uh
and there was a lot of cattle pasture out here and you know if I had a map that
was zoomed out further, you know here um
you know, you can see these big bends in the river, those tend to migrate and change
over time. So um you know actually what's happening now is this river that's running
along the road, it's it's starting to abandon that channel and it's running through
a new channel right here through the woods, which is actually a good thing for this
section of road. Yeah. Mhm. But during these big floods, you know, we still get a
lot of flow coming over this way and but really the issue here was just um
The culvert which used to be at the river level was now suddenly 15ft above the river
because it's carved this deep channel and the creek wants to cut down to that level
and it finally went around and under the culvert. So um kind of hard to
deal with stuff like that. Um You know we'll put in this temporary culvert, I'm sure
there'll be a discussion about fish passage, which we won't be able to provide in
a to do fish fish passage. You would have a multimillion dollar bridge project here.
Um But uh you know, to get the rea road reopened, we just need to get a culvert put
back in there and we do have money from federal highways, the federal lands
access program to do a reach assessment in here to study what kinds of
things could be done to protect the road. And maybe we'll look at that culvert and
the cost of future fish passage projects. They're obviously the county doesn't have
the money or resources to uh you know, do anything about big bridge
project or anything like that. But it could be a future federal and access program
project. We'll see how many people live farther out this road. Do we know? Uh None.
I mean there's the Dixons who live here in this
somewhat historic house. Uh huh. And her mother,
who was one of the original descendants of the iron man of the ho um Missy Barlow
lived here until she passed away a few years ago. They may be renting that, I don't
know and then more in more recent years, some folks um moved into this area here
and I don't know them but that's the extent of the um population down there. This
county road ends right about here and it enters the national park and there's a trail
head here for the national park, which then of course you can hike up the coast all
the way to La push 18 miles from, they're quite popular of course on the other side
of the river. This is the whole reservation here. Um, so that's the scene you have
going on down there. Mm. Thank you.
Um, I, I spoke with the commissioner from san juan County yesterday and um, you know,
they had a major road washout on Orcas Island during the previous um, one of the
previous storms a couple weeks ago and They had 120 houses on the far side and uh
uh they built a footbridge to for folks to be able to go across the first few days,
um just at least get out some emergency supplies and before they were able to fix
the road. So to get in genius in situations like this, huh, yep.
Um that's possible. Perhaps something that Emergency management can look into, Willie
could speak to that. You know, we have the Dow Jones Creek Road closed for three
or four weeks back in 2007 with a dozen homes on the other side of the washout. And
uh, I believe at that time the Callam County chain gang was engaged to build a footpath
around the washout. Um so, um, that's something that is, you know,
possible here, maybe we're going to stay focused on getting the road repaired right
now. Uh, but you know, this won't be the first time something like this has happened.
Um, you know, we stopped, yeah, we stocked emergency culvert in large sizes like
this six footer just for this situation 10 years ago, I sold 90 ft of that kid SAp
county because they had a road washout with a bunch of homes behind it and they didn't
have any covert. So we sold the mars and uh, then we restocked our supply. Um,
yeah, but um, so you know, the, this stuff happens in counties like you mentioned
SAn juan county and, and kids have county in other areas. Yeah, I'm glad you have
it on hand because san juan had to really scramble, They had to send someone down
to Oregon and we're lucky to find a four ft one with the supply chain right now,
especially they were afraid they wouldn't find anyone. It looks like Willie has to
go. So, um, let's give Willie a chance. He has the resolution that we need to consider
and I don't have much to, um, what monty was saying, you know, this emergency resolution
basically empowers public works to, to work a little bit faster to cut through some
of the bureaucratic red tape and really fix this problem, um, in an expedited manner.
Um, so, and as he was saying, we will be reaching out to collin County and a few
service organizations and see if we, what we can do to support the families who are
are cut off for the time being. So we'll be working on that, making sure that their
um they're well taken care of our Western residents are pretty party resilient bunch,
but we do want to make sure especially with folks get up there in years, it can be
hard for them to cross a creek or going through that rugged terrain. So we'll make
sure they're taken care of and we'll keep you in the loop on that. Um Is there any
benefit in mentioning the the state emergency due to the winter? They're
the extreme weather and storms we've been having recently in terms of being able
to secure funding in the future,
No particular need on that. And um you know, currently the state of emergency that
was declared um covers the second through 19 November. And I don't believe they have
extended that as of yet, although I would assume that's incoming. Um but but no,
no particular need for us to reference that there, this will stand on its own. Okay,
we would likely be if they don't extend the window and they do declare a federal
event at some point will likely be able to tie this back to that window because we
were starting to see erosion here um earlier, but didn't
expect it to fully, you know, wash out like this uh overnight. We had a plan to
put some rock around the eroded downstream outfall, but clearly
that plan is no longer viable. Mhm. So already we do, we need a
motion to pass this resolution? Uh Yeah, I think so. I am happy to make a motion
to pass a resolution in the matter of declaration of emergency damage two Emergency
County roads specifically um to damage to road infrastructure on oil, city road rendering
the road impassable due due to a washed out culvert. I will second that any further
discussion, all those in favor please say aye. Hi right,
um thank you all and good luck. Um do we have a bit of a window to get started on
this work or is there another round coming bad weather? Um you know, I don't know
yet. Uh Well, first try to uh yeah, figure out which contractors available to get
started the soonest and uh and then uh you know, go from there,
we've managed to put culverts in during the middle of some pretty big storms and
stuff, you know, it's not ideal, but it can be, it can be done. Mm um
And
and so anyway, yeah, uh you know, and we, we engage contractors for this kind of
work, it's not that our crew couldn't do a project like this, but it would consume
a major portion of our crew mandy. What's that? Oh no, okay. It's me, it would
consume a major portion of our crew who would also be put up in hotels out there
and then they wouldn't be available to do other work, clearing roads of trees and
stuff and windstorms and and other things like that. So really isn't a good idea
to tie up your whole crew on a big project like this, especially out in the West
End. Um they are delivering, you know the culvert out there um for the
repair and and you know, things like that, so it's good to have the contracting world
to draw from when you need them to Yeah, situations like this. Well thank
you. Thanks everyone. Thanks for being available. Sure. Okay, we'll get the signs
and get it sent over. We are adjourned. Thanks everyone. Goodbye you.