Salado Creek has had several devastating floods in written history, including the flood earlier this month which damaged 68 homes in Salado and half a dozen businesses.

Group wants to address flooding issues

By Tim Fleischer
Editor-in-Chief

Take a rock (recently washed down from upstream Salado Creek) and throw it in any direction.
It is likely to hit someone who has either been affected by the recent flooding of Salado Creek or has a staunch opinion on what is causing the severe flooding of Salado Creek. You may hit someone who has both been affected and has an opinion on the cause.
Several of those who fit the latter description gathered at the Salado Intermediate School cafeteria this week to talk about it during a Save the Creek Meeting involving local residents, property owners and representatives from political offices, government entities and private engineering and construction firms.
The Sept. 27 meeting was the second meeting of a number of land owners, business people and residents. An email to Salado Chamber members went out Sept. 22 announcing the second meeting. No announcements were made in local media, such as newspapers, radio, television or websites.
The email under the signature of Charlotte Douglass and Salado Chamber of Commerce President Nicole Stairs said that “Following the horrible flood earlier this month, a number of concerned area residents met to discuss whether there was anything that could be done to lessen possible future floods.”
Two committees were formed: one, headed by Bill Kiewer, to “study the immediate problem of rocks in the creek that seem to come from both the rock quarries and upstream erosion;” the second, headed by Brad Buckley, to “work on getting the plans for upstream retention ponds out of the planning stage and into the working stages.”
Before an audience of about 200 concerned residents, many of whom saw their homes flooded earlier this month, representatives from Brazos River Authority (which regulates the flow of water in the stream but not the bed or banks), Clearwater Underground Water Conservation District (which regulates groundwater, not surface water) and a private engineering firm spoke about the need for hydraulic and hydrological studies of the watershed before any discussion of building upstream flood control devices such as dams and retention ponds.
“Rivers change naturally,” Brad Burnett with the BRA said. “They also change due to man.”
Burnett referred to gravel operations upstream having an effect on silt and gravel getting into the stream bed. He also said that the gravel is also the result of natural erosion of cliffs and rock along the watershed.
A comprehensive watershed plan would cost $75,000, Buckley said. Some of that, up to 50 percent of it, could be paid for through matching grants from federal or state agencies.
The Texas Water Development Board administers the flood protection plan at the state level. The deadline for grant applications for flood mitigation studies is Oct. 1. HDR Engineering offered services to prepare those grant applications (with the stipulation of being the engineering firm to do the actual study). The grants will not be awarded until August 2011.
“So you want us to wait until August 2011 to even begin to study the problem? What do we do in the meantime?” one resident asked.
The wait will be much longer than August 2011. Once the recommendations are made (12 months from the start of the study), it may take a decade before any flood mitigation construction project sees the first shovel of dirt turned.
Not all of the recommendations from a flood mitigation study will be structural. Structural recommendations could include dams, retention ponds, reservoirs, culverts, bridges and widening the creek. Non-structural recommendations could include buy-outs of homeowners in flood-prone areas.
“A study will include cost estimate comparisons and the best, least costly solutions,” Burnett said. The Save the Creek group is collecting funds for the local obligation of any study of the flooding of Salado Creek. A Save the Creek account, managed and reported by the Salado Chamber of Commerce, has been established at Compass Bank.
Another fund was established to benefit the victims of the recent flooding. Donations can be made at First State Bank.
Residents raised questions about cleaning the gravel from the creek in hopes of lowering the water level. Mayor Merle Stalcup told the group that he is in contact with a highway contracting firm that may take the gravel for use in highway construction. A similar effort was done at the low water crossing of South Ridge and Old Mill by a contractor who used the gravel for filling around septic tanks. The gravel that accumulated at that low water crossing was lowered by at least a foot.
Until the next flood came along with its gravel building up at barriers along the way.
Old-timers in Salado say that the gravel is not the cause of the flooding, but a side effect of drastic changes in the watershed during rare events.
Salado Creek has produced several catastrophic floods during recent written history. The 1957 flood was comparable to the latest two floods that all went over the Main Street Bridge. .Shepperd’s grocery store was situated in the creek-side building currently occupied by Rosanky’s at that time. Their store was flooded.
Even worse than either of these was the 1921, a flood many old-timers say rose all the way to the foot of College Hill. In fact, Clyde Capps tells the story of how his mother marked the water level of that 1921 flood about three feet up the trunk of a tree at the base of College Hill.
In 1913, a major flood destroyed two earlier bridges, one that was built by the county in the early part of the century and the remnants of the old suspension bridge that was built in 1869.
According to George Tyler’s History of Bell County, Salado was first incorporated with Judge O.T. Tyler as the first mayor for the purpose of issuing bonds to build the suspension bridge. That bridge washed away less than 50 years later.
Other memorable floods of the Salado Creek were 1973, 1986 and 1998. Residents will remember that the floods of 1998 resulted in water spilling over the spillway of the dams at both the Stillhouse and Belton Lakes.
Conspicuous in their absence from the two meetings were some of Salado’s old-timers who could give historical perspective on the nature of Salado Creek and large property owners west of Salado where any flood mitigation projects would be built. “I didn’t know anything about it until I drove by and saw a full parking lot and read about it in the paper the day after,” lifelong resident Monroe Moore said. The Moore family owns 320 acres west of Salado at the Elm Spring that feeds into Salado Creek.
Moore said that the meeting did not indicate the opinions of everyone in Salado. “Why weren’t we told about it? It’s our property that could be effected?”
“Why in the world should I be forced by the state to sell my property,” Moore said, “because some idiot built in the flood plain?”
“Take a look at where the old houses that have been here 150 years were built,” Moore added. “They weren’t built right on the creek.”

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