Flooding cause on the Oregon Coast is obvious

Every year during the rainy season, flooding on the Oregon Coast is a possibility. This letter to the editor published Friday in The Daily Astorian provides local insight in the cause and effect relationship cutting trees has with heavy precipitation:

Am I the only one who thinks it’s crazy for the county and the Oregon Department of Transportation to spend money to find out where the water comes from that floods the Necanicum River? Maybe I can help them out. I recommend getting a Metzker Map and Google Earth, so they can get the scope of the river’s drainage.

First off, it’s not where the water comes from (it rains hard), it’s how that water is delivered to the river. The biggest contributing factor is trees. When the rain hits the tree canopy it’s slowed down and dispersed over a greater area by the branches. The slower the water hits the soil, the slower it becomes saturated, the slower it erodes, and the slower the water runs off into the many tributaries of the Necanicum.

Read the remainder of the article here.

–Toshio Suzuki