Levee repair work starts; 73 trees must go (VIDEO)

Hays Public Works Director I.D. Creech shows slides of cottonwood trees marked for removal along the Big Creek levee.

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

“We said from the beginning we don’t want to remove any trees we don’t have to.”

Hays City Manager Toby Dougherty revised the agenda for Thursday night’s city commission work session and added another discussion about the Big Creek levee reconstruction and associated removal of 73 trees.

After engineers from Wilson and Co. and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reviewed and rejected an alternate proposal suggested last week by Hays resident Randy Rodgers, city commissioners this week again agreed “the trees really do have to come out.”

City Attorney John Bird told commissioners he researched the Code of Federal Regulations and found that “staff is right, and clearly, these trees (along the levee) don’t meet those regulations.”

“If there is a catastrophic event and we have flood insurance and then the insurance industry comes in to administer that, they will use any defenses they can find as far as the way we went about the renovation of the levee. If we have an unqualified levee and they can prove it, frankly, it’s going to be costly to the citizens of Hays,” Bird said.

“If you leave the trees and the levee fails, they will blame the trees no matter why the levee fails.”

Along with pictures of the large cottonwood trees marked for removal, Public Works Director I.D. Creech also showed black and white photos of the May 22, 1951, flood in Hays. Heavy rains breached Big Creek, causing walls of water to fill the downtown streets. Six people died.

“I remember our barn from the Bird Farm going down Big Creek,” Bird recalled.

“I’ve heard the stories. My family lived on 6th Street during the flood,” said Mayor Henry Schwaller IV.

Restoration work on the levee started this week.

According to Parks Department Director Jeff Boyle, the trees that are removed will be replaced in areas outside of the levee toe.