The city of Renton continues work toward repairing damages on the Cedar River caused by flooding back in 2020.

The city recently amended a professional services contract for the Cedar River Trail and Bank Stabilization Project to allow modifications to enhance salmon habitat.

In February 2020, a “50-year flood event” hit the Cedar River and eroded a section of riverbank adjacent to the Cedar River Trail.

“It took out a number of trees along this portion of the shoreline on the Cedar River. When the trees came out, they kind of took the embankment with them,” Renton Capital Projects Manager Betsy Severtsen said.

In March 2020, the council ratified and approved an emergency proclamation by Mayor Armondo Pavone to qualify for federal reimbursement.

Because this is a FEMA sponsored project, it requires coordination between the city’s emergency management group, state emergency management and federal emergency management. Severtsen said this process is causing the project to take longer than a normal city project of this scope.

After completing site assessments and engineering analysis, the city received a request from the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe during environmental reviews to add more wood structures into the river for salmon habitat. Severtsen said adding that feature to the plan as it was would have caused a “rise” in the river, which conflicted with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ requirements of being a “no rise” project.

“You think of it like a bucket and you throw a bunch of rocks in the bucket, the water rises,” Severtsen said. “We were kind of stuck because we thought at the time FEMA wouldn’t allow us to change the location of the trail.”

Severtsen said when she took over the project, she worked with the state sponsors and FEMA to move a segment of the Cedar River Trail further uphill to allow the project to include a change to the slope of the embankment and to construct salmon habitat.

This is one of several 2020 flood repair projects by the city and King County along the Cedar River. Because of limited construction windows due to salmon preservation, Severtsen said she did not expect construction on the project to happen until 2027.

“They’re really long projects and it’s really difficult when you have these little snafus because they are already very long,” Severtsen said. “Things can go into limbo for a while.”