State, Fema Ante Up To Help Fix Milo Creek Water Underground By October Is Goal Of Flood-Relief Officials

Milo Creek has quieted to a few ripples running through Kellogg’s streets, but efforts to fix the creek’s culvert system are racing ahead.

“Even though it’s still above ground, and it doesn’t look like we’ve done squat, we’ve been pretty busy,” said Jamie Sharp, Kellogg public works director.

One contractor is on the job moving underground utilities out of the way for emergency repairs scheduled to begin the first of September.

Sharp is confident that the creek will be underground by October.

The creek has been running above ground since May 15, when flood debris plugged its underground culvert system and sent the creek running over ground, through yards, homes and city streets.

The culvert’s failure also created hazardous sinkholes along the route.

The ancient underground system is too old and decrepit to repair, so the emergency solution is to put pipes under the streets that the creek now runs through. The route includes two 90-degree turns.

On Tuesday, the state Bureau of Disaster Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that Kellogg and Wardner will receive $1.1 million in FEMA funds for the work and the long-term solution, which is estimated to cost $8 million.

A variety of government agencies and other sources have verbally committed to several million dollars toward the project, said Pat Frischmuth of the state Bureau of Disaster Services, but the money isn’t available yet.

The long-term solution calls for building a new underground route down Division Street to an outlet to the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. Plans are to have funding in place to start on that work next summer, Frischmuth said.

“We’re in the process of putting together the management team for the project,” Frischmuth said.

One necessary step before securing funding is the creation of a special watershed district to raise taxes for maintenance of the watershed and underground system.

The county will a public meeting Monday at 6 p.m. in Kellogg Middle School to discuss the formation of the taxing district.

All interested federal, state and local government agencies, as well as property owners in the Milo Creek drainage, would be affected by the district and are invited to the meeting.

Meanwhile, the state Division of Environmental Quality has been working with the owner of a mine and old mine dump upstream of Wardner and Kellogg to keep acidic mine water from draining into Milo Creek. The agency and the Natural Resources Conservation Service also are working on ways to stabilize the jig tailings in the dump.

Frischmuth said the Environmental Protection Agency has committed some funds through the Bunker Hill Superfund project to clean up the jig tailings and “some slime.”

“We’re going to do a little bit this year, mostly just try to stabilize it,” Frischmuth said. “I don’t think we have enough time in the construction season to get it all done.”

During the spring flooding, the tailings were washed downstream and recontaminated several lawns that had been replaced once as a part of the Superfund cleanup.

Those lawns will have to be replaced again.

Sharp credits the state and federal disaster officials who devoted their summer to the Milo Creek project for the progress that’s being made.

“Even though they haven’t been laying the pipe, they’ve made it possible,” Sharp said. “We’ve seen those guys in 18 to 20 hour shifts time and time again.”

, DataTimes