Dike inspection process needs to be simple enough to use

Herald and News Editorial

April 30, 2007

   With all of the miles of dikes in the Klamath Basin and the levee break last year that cost millions of dollars, the federal government should make its dike inspection program fairly easy to use. 

   Complaints last week at a meeting of a task force on the county’s dikes said that it isn’t. 

   The Army Corps of Engineers will inspect dikes for tax districts or associations set up to maintain dikes. 

   The break of the Geary dike on Highway 140 last June flooded 2,000 acres including part of the golf course at the Running Y Ranch resort. After that, it was discovered that the Corps had been routinely notifying the Klamath County Road Department that it had the inspection service available, and the road department just as routinely hadn’t been replying because it wasn’t responsible for dikes. 

   Everyone might have benefited if either the Corps had checked to see why the county never responded, or if the county had told the Corps it needed to write somebody else. That doesn’t mean the Geary dike disaster northwest of Klamath Falls would have been headed off, but it could have made efforts to deal with the break easier.

Who’s responsible?    

It also wasn’t clear after last year’s dike failure who was responsible for which dikes. The process of trying to find out turned up dike owners who didn’t know they owned dikes or didn’t realize they were accountable for maintaining them. The local area had gone decades between major dike breaks and the issue had little visibility. 

   Several people at last week’s meeting complained about the federal government inspection program. 

   “There’s no place where you can get information on what to do,” said one farmer. Others complained about the complexity of the process and expressed fears that contact with the federal officials might mandate overly expensive repairs, or, in the case of Klamath County , might make the county responsible for liability from the dikes. 

   The Corps needs to deal with those concerns. It might take a nudge from U.S. Rep. Greg Walden to smooth things out. 

   It also needs to be recognized, though, that all paperwork and even complex processes are not automatically evil. Most of such things have legitimate reasons at their core dealing with such issues as accountability and making sure that all of the proper people have been notified. 

   It was also clear at last week’s meeting that there was much more left to do in nailing down responsibility for the dikes. What’s also been clear from the get-go is that the issue must not be allow to slip beneath the radar again. Out of sight, out of mind is a lousy policy when a break finally does come. A couple of thousand acres of land go under water and people can’t figure out who’s supposed to take care of such things.

Pat Bushey wrote today’s editorial, which represents the view of the Herald and News editorial board.

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