By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Heavy rains and the resulting floodwaters hit the Moapa Valley last week leaving destruction in its wake.
Clark County damage assessment teams spent much of last week touring the community, documenting property losses.
The community of Moapa sustained the lion’s share of property damage. About 91 homes in the town of Moapa and on the Moapa River Indian Reservation sustained some degree of flood damage according to the County report. About 48 homes were surveyed and found with flood damage in the Overton/Logandale area.
In typical small town fashion, friends and neighbors were the first line of assistance to those with flood damage to their homes. Community members mobilized as soon as Monday night to help flood-affected neighbors dig out and clean up.
Many youth who were home from school on Tuesday pitched in and helped in the service efforts.
“We have had a lot of our people seriously impacted by this,” said Moapa Town Board member Ann Schreiber. “But folks are pulling together like they do; and helping one another. And I think we will get through it like we’ve done before.”
American Red Cross crews also set up temporary shelters for displaced residents and offered assistance to those affected by flood waters. While here the Red Cross served a total of 169 meals, made site visits to 493 damaged homes and distributed 443 clean-up items to residents.
A Clark County Public Works assessment team made estimates on damage to roads and streets. According to their report, the most severely damaged county road was Henrie Road in Moapa, an main road leading into a major residential area. Several spots on Henrie Road had serious flood damage; enough that the two-lane road was restricted to a single lane in areas until repairs are made.
Estimated damage to roads in Moapa was around $424,000. Road damage in the lower valley was estimated at around $243,000.
On Tuesday last week, Governor Brian Sandoval declared a state of emergency for Clark County and the Moapa Band of Paiutes. This enables local governments to qualify for state and federal disaster assistance.
Shortly after that, the Clark County Office of Emergency Management set up a recorded message line for property owners to call and report flood damage from the week’s storms. That hotline is 702-455-5717.
The following is a synopsis of several areas where flood damage was significant in this flood.
Interstate 15
I-15 sustained massive flood damage on the two mile stretch between the Glendale and Overton exits, where the highway crosses Weiser Wash.
The flooding closed the interstate for about 30 miles between the Valley of Fire exit 75 and the Logandale/Overton exit. Motorists were rerouted along Valley of Fire road, through downtown Overton, and back to the interstate. Commercial traffic was stopped at U.S. Highway 93 and sent north through Alamo, Caliente, Panaca and on to Cedar City. This caused significant traffic snarls in those communities.
Work crews from contractor Las Vegas Paving worked quickly last week to restore a single lane of traffic in either direction to the interstate.
The roadway was opened to passenger traffic on Friday afternoon at around 4:30 p.m. The area is still under restrictions for commercial vehicles.
Repairing the stretch of I-15 is expected to cost approximately $5 million, according to NDOT officials.
MV Water District lines
In connection with the damage on I-15, Moapa Valley Water District lost a major 14” water main which ran along the interstate right of way.
MVWD General Manager Joe Davis said that this might have been a much bigger problem if district crews had not recently installed valves in the system enabling the isolation of that line. With those valves in place, service could be rerouted preventing a much larger outage in the Moapa/Glendale area.
In addition to the interstate line, the MVWD system sustained some moderate damage. MVWD crews were kept busy after the flood making repairs to nine leaks in various spots throughout the service territory. These affected only about 20 customers. Eighteen of those were back in service by Tuesday night. By Wednesday night the other two remaining customers had water service restored.
“We got a little bloody, but we weren’t broken,” Davis said. “Our system got hammered, but all in all we came out okay.”
MVWD pumps require power to operate. So when the power outage occurred, there was a period when water was not being pumped at the source.
Water supply was dependent upon the water storage tanks in the community during that time, Davis said. But crews were able to travel to the pump sites and restart them again on generator power. This restored the water tanks so that there was minimal draw-down during the crisis.
Davis praised the efficiency of the MVWD crews. “They’ve worked hard and done a phenomenal job,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade my guys for any other team of water operators anywhere.”
Cooper Bridge Project
As of last weekend, the word was still out on whether significant damages had been done to the bridge project at Cooper Street currently under construction.
Jed Wheeler, of contractor Meadow Valley Construction, said that the structure of the partly-completed bridge appears to still be sound, despite the beating that the site was given by the flood. An engineer has been called in to inspect the structure and was expected to make a finding in the matter early this week.
Even if the bridge is determined to be sound, the project is still not entirely in the clear. The company now faces the significant expense of clean up to the area, Wheeler said. Work crews must clear the debris and silt away from the site and restore the safeguards that were in place to protect the project against more moderate flood events.
What’s more, it appears that the temporary shorings that hold up the bridge during construction have settled. So the company will have to do some reshoring on the bottom deck of the bridge. That work is likely to be costly; though the precise figures have still not been determined, according to Wheeler.
The good news is that the widening of the channel at Cooper Crossing seems to have alleviated some of the flooding that has traditionally taken place in the Cooper Street neighborhood. Though some homes in the area did receive significant damage, many that were bracing for the floodwaters came through on dry ground.
Company officials are currently seeking emergency funding to help defray the unexpected costs of the flood and help get the project up and running quicker. Meadow Valley officials have contacted the Governor’s office as well as State Legislators to petititon for funding. They planned to make a presentation before the Clark County Commission on Tuesday.
“We hope to have the community’s support in making this petition for funding,” Wheeler said. “This is an important project to the community and we want to see it finished as quickly as possible.”
Moapa River Reservation
Heavy flooding from the surrounding foothills topped over a flood channel at the Paiute reservation and washed out a levee. This sent flood waters through the Segmiller Street neighborhood damaging several homes in the area.
In addition, flood waters damaged and breached a sewage treatment pond servicing the Indian Housing area at the end of Perkins Way. Sewage from the breach flowed down stream into the Muddy River.
On Tuesday, NV Energy officials from Reid Gardner Power Station, approached tribal leaders with offers of assistance. NV Energy sent equipment with contractor Eagle View Construction to help clean up the neighborhood and rebuild the flood control infrastructure. Crews spent most of the day on Tuesday and again on Friday assisting the tribe in these efforts.
Earthen Levee Near Bowman Reservoir
An old dirt levee east of Bowman Reservoir failed on Monday, sending flood waters down the wash through the Logandale Storage facility, the Valley Heights subdivision, and into the homes along Whipple Ave. and Hardy Ave. in Logandale.
The unofficial levee, which had originally been built decades ago by concerned community members, was intended to divert flood waters from the natural wash into the Bowman Reservoir. The last time anyone remembers the levee being repaired was sometime in the early 1980s. Since that time, silt deposits have developed above the levee. Water from last week’s huge flood event over-topped the levee and washed it away, causing flooding in the neighborhoods to the south.
A group of Logandale residents, including Moapa Valley Town Advisory Board chairman Gene Houston, met with County Commissioner Tom Collins last week to discuss that situation and to talk about possible solutions.
Overton Wildlife Management Area
The flood caused significant damage to the Overton Wildlife Management Area (OWMA) south of Overton. With the 2014 hunting seasons on the horizon, that may be bad news for southern Nevada’s waterfowl hunters.
“We will likely lose several moist-soil units this season, and maybe eight pond blinds.” said Tim Wood, management area supervisor.
Hardest hit are those portions of the management area located adjacent to the Muddy River where flood waters blew gaping holes in levees and washed away roads.
Damaged levees resulted in the loss of Wilson and Pintail ponds, two of the management area’s four large ponds.
“Our water system remains intact, but the levees and roads took it on the chin,” said Woods. “We will do everything we can to provide as much hunt opportunity as we can, unfortunately we won’t be able to bring the management area up to 100 percent for this year.”
