LOCHSLOY — Work is set to start this week on a $3.2 million state project to buttress the bank where the Pilchuck River is dangerously close to taking a bite out of Highway 92.
The fast-moving, flood-prone river is less than 40 feet from the road, according to project engineer Dave Lindberg.
“If we don’t stop this erosion now, we run the risk of losing the highway,” he said in a news release.
The worst erosion is at a sharp meander between Granite Falls and Lake Stevens. In 2012, that bend in the river consumed the retirement home of Clayton and Catherine Bess during a fierce February flood. For four years, rebar and plastic pipes have jutted out of the broken bank, a jaggedly marker of where a house and yard used to be.
The state Department of Transportation estimates that the river carved away 130 feet of the bank between 2006 and 2009, mostly during a record flood in January 2009. It’s been eroding 30 to 40 feet farther each year since.
After the house fell in, workers put in orange and white markers to track the distance between the highway’s pavement and the drop-off to the water. In December 2014, the markers tracked about 70 feet of riverbank. That means more than 30 feet have been lost in the last year and a half.
Along with the threat to the highway, the erosion is undercutting the bank at a nearby home and pasture. The project is expected to protect that property as well as the road.
Contractors from Marshbank Construction are scheduled to start installing an AquaDam, a temporary barrier to redirect the river’s current from the work zone, on Wednesday.
After that, the plan is for crews to build a compressed dirt embankment and reinforce it with rocks, logs and root wads to keep the river from sloughing away the earth. Designs call for planting trees and shrubs on the new slope to help prevent erosion and to add wildlife habitat.
Most of the work is expected to take place on weekdays between 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Roughly 11,000 cars and trucks use that stretch of Highway 92 each day. Drivers should expect some slowdowns on the two-lane highway and an occasional detour via 84th Street Northeast.
No lane closures or detours are expected until after the Fourth of July. The goal is to have the project done by late September, said Kris Olsen, a department of transportation spokeswoman. Crews already have started building access to the work area, she said.
The river bend near the highway isn’t the only part of the Pilchuck that may see changes soon.
Less than a mile away, homeowners in the Lochaven neighborhood are set to vote Aug. 2 on whether or not to form a flood control district. If the measure passes, they could issue bonds and levy assessments on their properties to pay for projects to shore up the riverbank where it’s been steadily swiping chunks of their back yards. The challenge would be working around fish habitat and migration patterns.
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com
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