Boise Seeks Plan To Avoid Muddy Mess Runoff From Scorched Foothills Could Be A Problem If Rain Falls
More than 4,000 homes and hundreds of downtown businesses could be covered in muddy debris if harsh storms hit the fire-ravaged Foothills.
Boise City Council members met with U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials Tuesday night to discuss flood-prevention options.
More than a half-dozen state and federal agencies have teamed up to devise alternative plans by Friday. Authorities are expected to select a plan of action by early next week.
BLM officials warned council members that recovery efforts and flood prevention will take time.
“There’s relatively little we can do now until spring to hold the sediment back if we get a major storm,” BLM spokesman Barry Rose said.
Four areas in Boise overlap with 100-year flood plains, outlined in a 1992 study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Those areas might face a greater risk of flooding than other parts of the city.
“It’s difficult to say for sure, because we can’t predict the weather,” Rose said. “If we had an inch of rain within a three- or four-hour period, we’d probably see flooding.”
The Eighth Street Fire, which burned across 14,000 acres last week, stripped the land of its natural flood defenses. Grass, trees and mountain brush would have soaked in water and anchored soil to the hillsides. But waxy, water-resistant residue from burnt vegetation has left the land prone to flooding.
“Those waters have one place to go and that’s downtown Boise,” said Mayor Brent Coles. “If there’s anything we can do to help, this community stands ready to respond.”
Terracing - or bulldozing rings around the Foothills - is one option to fight erosion.
“We could have bulldozers running 24 hours a day for two months to do the terracing we’d need,” Rose said. “It’s permanently disfiguring the land.”
Some areas of the Foothills were terraced 37 years ago. Authorities at the time opted for that solution after three devastating floods followed a Foothills fire on Aug. 3, 1959.