Hurricane mayor explains why Gould Wash wasn't dredged between the two floods

Hurricane Mayor Clark Fawcett said the city did not dredge Gould Wash between the Aug. 14 and Oct. 22 floods because he judged the chance of two major storms that close together to be statistically near zero. He said crews followed the usual schedule of waiting until irrigation season ended, since the wet channel made it risky to bring in heavy equipment near buried utilities. ^[1]

City officials estimate the October flood caused several million dollars in damage and affected at least 80 homes near the wash, west of the city center. One resident told The Salt Lake Tribune that neighbors raised dredging at a city council meeting after the first flood, and another said nothing was done to the wash before the second one. ^[1]

Fawcett said that after the October flood he told crews to clear the wash anyway, using smaller equipment and hand tools in places to protect a sewer line that crosses it. The city plans to apply to the Natural Resources Conservation Service for money to hire a consultant to design an upstream retention basin on Bureau of Land Management land east of the flood zone. Engineers are also looking at replacing the 700 West bridge and at raising the banks and widening the wash from 850 West to 1040 West. ^[1]

The mayor said bigger changes would need an Army Corps of Engineers permit and would have to deal with cost, private property lines, utility lines and the risk of pushing water into other neighborhoods. He said a basin could be four or five years away, and that he does not expect FEMA to help individual homeowners because the disaster is below the agency's threshold. The Small Business Administration offers low-interest disaster loans. ^[1]

Rep. Celeste Maloy said her office is working with the city, the conservation service, the Small Business Administration and congressional committees. ^[1]

Hurricane, Washington County and the conservation service signed off in March on a plan for the Gould Wash Flood Protection Project, which calls for a dry detention dam on federal land upstream and channel work through town. ^[2] FOX 13 reported in August that the project would cost about $63 million, with the federal government covering about $58 million. ^[3]