[Klickitat] 🌊The Great Downtown Flood & Red Rag Mystery - Bingen April ‘26 Round-Up

Bingen's downtown takes a hit as a contractor strikes an unmarked water main, flooding local businesses and forcing month-long closures. We dive into the major flood that swept through town, and our request to help solve the mystery of who is clogging the city’s water system with a distinctive item: red cotton shop rags!

In This Episode:

• The missing locate wire and the fallout for Carmen's Kitchen
• Sewer plant upgrades and the expensive problem with red shop rags
• The BNSF Quiet Zone diagnostic timeline and the Walnut Street hurdle
• State-mandated middle housing friction on Lois Lane
• The new Building Committee and Gorge Heritage Museum repairs
• A forthcoming Immigrant Community Support Statement

Resources & Links:

• Read the full written text at skamaniadispatch.com
• Water main break floods Bingen businesses, forces closures
• Bingen City Council Agendas & Minutes: City of Bingen Website

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back. Today we're digging into April municipal roundups, starting with Benchon City Council. I know lots of folks have been eagerly awaiting this update as we're starting with one of the more dramatic infrastructure failures that I've seen in my years of living here. Our socials were literally flooded with dramatic images of knee-deep water that had left several downtown businesses facing prolonged closures. So let's find out what happened there. On April 15th, a contractor named Grade Works Excavating was installing a new flashing pedestrian crossing beacon downtown. While working there, Augur struck an 8-inch PVC water main. According to the city, this older pipe did not have a metal locate wire attached to it. Public Works marked the location to the best of their ability with available maps, but the contractor was drilling about five feet away from that locate mark when the pipe burst. The resulting flooding pushed water directly into several businesses, including studio CBC, mugs, and chips. Over at Carmen's Kitchen, owner Miguel Reyes said he is being forced to rip up his entire dining room floor and is embracing for a closure that could last up to two months while the damage is repaired. The city's insurance pool is actively handling the claims, but going forward, Bingin is going to require a process called potholing for all future excavation projects. That means that contractors have to physically dig small exploratory holes to visually verify utility locations before they bring in the heavy machinery. If you think that sounds expensive, it's because it is. So we can imagine that this is going to unfortunately add to the costs of many of our infrastructure projects moving forward. Definitely a struggle for a lot of cities. If you're wondering how an accident like this happens, it's actually a really common problem with older infrastructure. PVC pipes are plastic, so standard underground metal detectors can't find them without a special tracer wire attached. When the wire is missing or broken, city crews are forced to trust decades-old historical maps that are, as we can see, notoriously inaccurate. So speaking of underground utilities, the city approved a$630,000 engineering loan contract with the Department of Ecology to design essential wastewater treatment plant improvements. Bingon authorized a capacity analysis study with Graham Osborne, sharing the cost with White Salmon. They need to figure out how to process higher strength waste within the plant's existing footprint. Upgrades to the headworks are delayed by six to eight months while the study is completed. In the meantime, the plant is struggling with severe clogs caused by non-flushable items, specifically red cotton shop rags. I have to note here as a public service announcement that no matter what it says on the package, no wipe is flushable. Tons of municipalities are enduring really wild costs because folks flush things that they think are flushable, be it red cotton shop rag or an unflushable, quote unquote flushable wipe. Please dispose of those in the garbage and help us all do our part to maintain our existing and aging infrastructure. So a quick look at traffic and safety, funding to establish a train quiet zone, especially becomes available on July 1st, triggering a diagnostic site visit with BNSF in late July. But the Walnut Street crossing remains a major hurdle. A building owned by SDS Lumber encroaches on the space needed for standard quad gates. If SDS can't modify the building's corner, the city might be forced to permanently close that crossing to achieve the quiet zone. So, moving over to housing and zoning, Benchin is seeing some friction over state density mandates. Residents on Lois Lane submitted a formal letter protesting a new triplex planned on their narrow private road. Residents criticized the city's notification process, saying that they were totally unaware of the 2023 quote unquote middle housing zoning changes because the city allegedly only mailed a single notice via utility bill inserts. It highlights a tough structural blind spot. The state requires cities to allow these triplexes to respond to a housing emergency. But when these state mandates clash with undersized privately maintained roads and the difficulties in communicating changes to folks, the local jurisdiction is left to manage the fallout. In a move to reclaim a measure of local control over a different state housing mandate, the council adopted local rules for citing what's called Step Housing, STEP, which stands for shelters, transitional housing, emergency housing, and permanent supportive housing. The council amended the final draft to require a 750-foot notification radius for neighbors when a facility is proposed, and operators will be mandated to hold at least two public meetings. Wrapping up with city administration, the council approved a three-year lease extension for the Gorge Heritage Museum. However, the building requires significant maintenance, including roof repairs, exterior paint, potential asbestos abatement in the basement. In response, the council directed the creation of a formal building committee to audit and oversee all city-owned properties. Finally, Councilor Dale Grinstead Mail drafted a resolution supporting the local immigrant community and upholding Fourth Amendment rights in response to federal ICE activities. The council reached a consensus on the language, and the city administrator will format the document for a formal vote at an upcoming meeting. This has been your quick look at Bijan. And as a reminder, the Bingin City Council meets on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at 6 o'clock in the evening. You can attend in person at City Hall or virtually via Zoom. Be sure to check out the text version of this dispatch for links to agendas and public comment instructions. You've been listening to a production of opengorge.org, the home of the Scamania Dispatch, and the Click a Tatler. We believe that informed communities are stronger communities. To support our work and stay up to date on everything happening in the gorge, head over to Scamania Dispatch.com to sign up for our newsletters. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash open gorge. Join the conversation and share your thoughts on today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. Try to keep your feet dry, and we'll talk to you next time.