By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
Residents in the upper Muddy area feel that they have been forgotten in the region’s flood control planning. At least that is what Moapa Town Advisory Board (MTAB) members told Clark County Regional Flood Control District (CCRFCD) officials when an update of the 10 year flood plan was presented to them at a meeting on Thursday, January 27.
“There are all kinds of plans going into taking care of the folks down in the lower valley but no one gives a hoot what happens to us up here,” said MTAB member Ann Schreiber. “We have the Meadow Valley wash and the California wash that just hits the heck out of us every time it rains, and then it just meanders down there to Overton. But no one gives us a second thought.”
Schreiber said that in the recent instance which threatened flooding in the days before Christmas, she had monitored water levels very carefully. She said that she had spent a lot of time on the bridge in Glendale watching the water rise and interacting with other people there who were doing the same.
“There were a lot of people there watching just to see how much water was going to be coming down to Overton,” Schreiber said. “That is all they were worried about. No one was checking on how it would go for Moapa. We need to get something going for flood protection up here, but we don’t seem to be on anyone’s radar.”
CCRFCD official Kevin Eubanks stated that, given the circumstances, there was little that the district could do to prevent flooding in upper Muddy fields and yards, but he believed that flooding in homes was rare in the area.
“Though we have no structures proposed for the upper Muddy, our plan is to employ sound flood plain management techniques,” Eubanks said.
But community members countered this by stating that there are many instances where homes are flooded in the community with some regularity. MTAB member Lyn Wren said that in the flood of 2005 she had three feet or more of water running on her property.
“We worked long hours getting sandbags set to try to keep it out of my home,” Wren said. “I definitely have gotten water in my house. Every time there is water the basement gets flooded and we have to pump it out.”
“The fact is that the floods hit us first and hardest,” Schreiber said. “We’ve had cattle carried down the river and trailers (homes) swept down with people in them needing rescue. But all of this seems to get overlooked.”
Schreiber suggested that an area of focus ought to be clearing tamarisk out of the riverbed.
“The overgrown tamarisk needs to be gotten rid of, because that backs up a lot of the water,” Schreiber said. “In areas where that stuff has been cleared, the water runs smoothly downstream.”
Eubanks said that the district had developed a vegetation control plan for the Virgin River area and stated that the same could be done for the upper Muddy. But clearing out areas of the river would require property owners to grant permanent, continuous easements to legally access those areas, Eubanks explained.
“That won’t be a problem,” Schreiber said. “I can get you easements to those areas.”
Eubanks stated that even if all the tamarisk was removed, it wouldn’t prevent 100 year flood waters from spreading out across the flood plain.
“People’s yards might very well get flooded,” Eubanks said, “but our focus in flood plain management is on protecting the homes that are built.”
“I think that we have to face the fact that there is nothing that anyone can build that will do anything for the kinds of flooding issues that we have,” said Wren. “We live at the end of two huge drainage systems and the water will spread out across the fields here in a flood. But at least we can hold the county to the use of sound flood plain management. That is where the focus needs to be.”
County Commissioner Tom Collins, who was in attendance at the meeting, asked if the 10 year flood plan had incorporated the Riverview major development project plans. Eubanks said that the plan didn’t need to.
“The Riverview project is subject to flood control design criteria already,” Eubanks said. “They are proposing river channel improvements that will cover their project. We would review those plans to make sure that they are sufficient. That is really what sound flood plain management means.”
Craig Wolfley made a motion to accept the revision of the 10 year flood control plan with the request that a vegetation control plan for the upper Muddy area be developed and implemented. The motion was accepted with a unanimous vote.
