This Year, Town’S Up A Creek Controversial Project Will Replace Old System At A Cost

Anne Hellemons knows it’s spring when boulders rumble under her strawberries.

“You can hear it, bump, bump, bump, under the garden, under the shed,” said Hellemons, who has listened to the sound for nearly 50 years.

It’s not ghosts and it’s not hard-rock miners. Now that most of the Silver Valley’s mines are closed, the only thing that rumbles underground is Milo Creek, which has the misfortune of tumbling down a chasm that’s too narrow for a town and creek both.

Over the past 100 years, more and more of the creek has been buried in channels of wood, steel and concrete. Gardens, houses and roads gradually were built over the top in Wardner and neighboring Kellogg.

That subterranean system is badly deteriorated. Last year, boulders and other debris got caught on rough spots in the pipes, sending up geysers that destroyed streets and lawns, damaged a few houses and caused the evacuation of the Amy Lynn Apartments in Kellogg.

Local, state and federal agencies are about to replace the system, burying even more of the creek. But that two-year, $12.5 million effort will temporarily close the only paved road into Wardner and leave some of the town’s 234 residents stranded at times this summer and fall.

Town officials have told elderly residents they’d better plan on visiting out-of-town relatives when construction hits their block. They’ve warned homeowners to buy flood insurance - something many in this economically depressed region say they can’t afford - because the state won’t hold the contractor liable if storms send torrents raging through town during construction.

“Last year, it was a natural disaster. This year, it will be a man-made disaster,” said Ric Clarke, project spokesman for the state Bureau of Disaster Services.

Small enough to jump across, Milo Creek flows about four miles, from hills near Silver Mountain Ski Resort to the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. Its pure upper reaches provide drinking water for Wardner, but stretches just above town are tainted by heavy metals from the old Bunker Hill Mine.

Plans this year call for moving the stream into two 54-inch plastic pipes that will lie under about a mile of Main Street, the address for most of Wardner’s 100 houses. The old pipes and channels will be abandoned and the creek no longer will flow under houses.

The only place the creek will surface in Wardner is at four reservoirs engineers hope will slow its momentum.

Next year, the project will continue in Kellogg, where the valley is broad enough to provide room for detours around construction sites.

In Wardner, there are few options for detours. Two rough service roads that loop behind some houses may be used at times. But those dirt roads won’t provide access to the entire town.

Depending on how the contractor wants to handle things, residents may take shuttle vans from Kellogg. Or the cities and state may fix up a two-mile dirt road that now is so steep and rough it requires a four-wheel-drive truck with a courageous driver. Crews may flatten a landing pad so emergency helicopters can land in town.

The contractor will be selected by mid-June, and work is scheduled to start in early July. Until then, “we’re in a state of limbo,” said Darren Blagburn, a disaster services spokesman in Boise.

The project manager left for vacation Thursday and the local coordinator is recovering from surgery. Meanwhile, some Wardner residents are getting anxious.

“We have quite a few elderly people, and we have to notify them in plenty of time (of road closures) so they don’t get too shook up,” said former mayor Chuck Peterson, who was born in Wardner in 1932.

Peterson, a big proponent of the project, said most residents support it, but dread the disruption.

“We’ve still got to get the people in and out. We’ve got to have fire trucks, the police, ambulances and supplies,” he said.

One worried resident is Bonnie George, whose daughter has a rare condition that causes seizures nearly every day. Doctors have warned George to rush 17-year-old Trin to a hospital if a seizure lasts more than five minutes.

“If I can’t get out, they’re going to have to move me out of here,” George said.

Clarke wonders how Trin George will board the school bus when it no longer can come to her door. She can’t run her wheelchair over construction debris.

“We’re working on that,” he said.

Art Crulitz, transportation supervisor for Shoshone School District, said he’s confident the district can work around any street closures. It’s pointless to worry about it until the project gets under way and everyone gets a better idea of the disruption, he said.

Arthur Aamodt, another Main Street resident, thinks the project is a farce, a way for the city to use disaster-relief money to get a newly paved street. A pretty channel behind his house is one of the few places Milo Creek runs above ground in Wardner; it will go dry once the project is done.

“I’ve never had to have flood insurance as long as I’ve been here, and now, all of a sudden they’re telling me I need it,” said Aamodt, a mail carrier and former miner who moved to the town in the 1960s. “I don’t think I’ll bother.”

Hellemons hasn’t decided whether to spend several hundred dollars on insurance, either. Milo Creek and its dangers have been part of her life since 1940, when she moved to Wardner as a young bride. The stretch through her yard was buried in a concrete tunnel in the 1950s.

Hellemons recalled a day in the early 1940s, when her daughter fell asleep in a closet. Hellemons, who thought the girl had gone outside to play, frantically searched the creek for her body.

She filled sandbags during the bad flood of ‘49, when water lapped at both doors of her house. She saw workers blow off the corner of a house that year, when they used too much dynamite to break loose the jam that was blocking water.

She saw a geyser last year that tore up a neighbor’s yard.

Hellemons and her neighbors survived those events and she figures they can withstand whatever else Milo Creek or contractors send their way.

“It’s a project that has to be done,” she said. “We’ve fought the water enough.”