Housing along river a flood risk?

SPANISH FORK — The Spanish Fork River commissioner has expressed concern that a change in the flood plain map along the river may not give a true picture for potential future floods.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency changed the flood plain designation last year after an engineer for developer Richard Mendenhall submitted new information on potential flooding.

The river hasn't flooded in 21 years.

The change would help Mendenhall gain approval to build a 205-lot subdivision in an area where older residents claim they remember seeing high-water floods.

Mortgage companies require flood insurance in areas with a flood plain designation; it's optional without the designation.

Mendenhall is making a second attempt at approval for the subdivision in the Leland area despite the council rejecting his rezoning application a few weeks ago. The preliminary plat agreement, which has not yet been approved, would put flood control responsibility on lot owners, not the developer.

The City Council will take up consideration of his new rezoning application on June 15.

Mendenhall needs a 5-acre area rezoned from its current agricultural designation for his 80.37-acre River Cove subdivision to move forward.

Last month, Mendenhall claimed that he did everything city planner Emil Pierson told him to do before seeing his request denied on a 3-2 vote by the council. The vote followed a public hearing where area residents were extremely vocal in their opposition to the request.

Two other subdivisions, however, have already been approved in the river bottoms area.

"He just wants what the others got," Mayor Dale Barney said. Barney lives in the area near the subdivision site.

Mendenhall told the Deseret Morning News that new upriver structures would protect the land from flooding.

River Commissioner John Mendenhall (who may be a distant relative of the developer) disagrees.

"There are no structures to take care of floods. That's awfully scary if that's what they're thinking," he said of speculation that a debris basin is helpful for flood control.

The debris basin was constructed after a massive mud slide in 1983 blocked the Spanish Fork River and created Thistle Lake, which inundated the town of Thistle.

"Those 100-year floods come like clockwork every 30 years," John Mendenhall said.