Flooding due to forecasted rain and high winds affected Seward over the weekend.
The City of Seward’s Public Works Crews worked around the clock to mitigate the buildup of outfall from the Lowell Canyon Tunnel. Sunday afternoon, water flowing out of the tunnel was traveling at 300 cubic feet per second, but has reached as high as 400 ft3/second in the last 24 hours. Brenda Ballou, Public Information Officer for the City of Seward says heavy equipment operators continue to remove outfall and debris from under the waterfall so it does not build up and jeopardize the bridge.
The Borough Incident Management Team explained on the KPB Alerts Facebook page, “There’s a dramatic difference from just a couple of days ago. So if you take a look behind me see a dozer in work and you can really tell there’s a big difference in the amount of waterfall that is actually coming down today. It started lessening up yesterday and you could see the difference in the lessening amount of runoff that we’re experiencing today. There’s been a dramatic amount of work that is continuing right now, which will further enhance the repair efforts as we finish out the response. So, crews are still heavy in work all throughout Seward, but throughout all of the different creeks and river systems in the area, we have seen a drop. We will continue to monitor conditions and advise you as necessary.”
Although the rockslide area on the hill above Lowell Point Road remains unstable, one lane of the road remains open for vehicle traffic. Motorists should use EXTREME CAUTION if traveling the road, and should not stop for any reason.
In another video, the Borough Incident Management Team explained on the KPB Alerts Facebook page, “So the distance between the water and where the bottom of the bridge is one of those things we look at quite a bit. So you could see the excavator starting to work and if I take a walk over this section, you could see there’s such a good amount of sediment that is still up here. So one of the work that we are going to have this excavator do is continue to move out the sediment. The amount of sediment can be down obviously impacts the level of the waterway because sediment will reduce the amount of water and it pushes the water out to the sides instead of having a nice channel down the center of the creek. And we also have a dozer that is upstream also continuing to work clear out these areas to make sure that water has the capacity to be able to flow through down the center of the creek as opposed to going wider.”
Residents of the City of Seward can contact Police Dispatch at (907) 224-3338 with any questions or concerns. In the community immediately surrounding Seward, the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s Office of Emergency Management (KPBOEM) has crews working hard on several areas of flooding. Residents in those areas can call the borough at (907) 714-2469 with questions or concerns.
