A new challenge to RiverBend.

Byline: Joe Harwood The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - Just when PeaceHealth thought it could go about building its RiverBend regional medical center unmolested, another critic is nipping at the heels of the hospital corporation.

Springfield resident David Rodriguez on Monday sent notice to the state Land Use Board of Appeals that he intends to fight the city's March approval of the RiverBend master plan. PeaceHealth proposes to build a $350 million hospital and a mix of medical, commercial and residential buildings on 160 acres in north Springfield.

Rodriguez claims that PeaceHealth and the city failed to properly address potential flooding hazards, and that a 100-year flood would put most of the complex under water.

The RiverBend site sits immediately to the west of a U-shaped meander of the McKenzie River. Putting a hospital next to a river is a bad idea, Rodriguez said. Putting it next to a meander is "negligent," he said.

Rodriguez said he worries that the McKenzie could cut a new channel across low farmland to the east of the RiverBend site. If that happens, the full force of the McKenzie would then plow directly into the riverbanks where PeaceHealth has plans for residential development, he said.

"Over the past four years of floodplain analysis, they have not looked at the possibility of channel migration," Rodriguez said. "PeaceHealth never considered it as a risk, and Springfield never required them to study it."

Rodriguez asserted that if a channel migration study was done, half the RiverBend site would probably be ruled unfit for development.

But PeaceHealth and the city say they're satisfied that the RiverBend site is adequately protected against flooding, and that PeaceHealth has carefully evaluated the problem.

Philip Farrington, PeaceHealth's director of planning and development, noted that three miles of riverbank in the vicinity of the RiverBend site, including the bank of the McKenzie immediately alongside the RiverBend site, are reinforced with big chunks of rock, or riprap.

Also, PeaceHealth has said it will develop only on the higher elevations of the 160-acre site, and that the first floor of any development will be one foot above the predicted level of a 500-year-flood.

While PeaceHealth didn't conduct a river migration study, it did do an extensive study of three miles of the McKenzie's floodplain to determine whether flood-level data previously compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were valid, and sent that to a third party for peer review before submitting it to the city, Farrington said.

Colin Stephens, planning supervisor for Springfield, said the city hired another third-party engineering firm, CH2M Hill, to review the analysis.

"That was an unbiased, professional assessment," Stephens said. "They agreed with the findings of the report."

Farrington said studies that specifically try to predict whether river channels are likely to shift are not required by Springfield or the state.

"A channel migration study isn't a definitive analysis," Farrington added. "It deals with probability."

Farrington acknowledged that rivers change course, but disputed Rodriguez's claims.

`Where the river is moving, it's moving further away from the (RiverBend) site,' he said. "I think we've taken the precautions we need to take, given we are building near the river."

But Rodriguez said the riverbanks that have been reinforced with riprap would stand little chance of holding if the river channel shifted and the water hit the RiverBend site head on.

Rodriguez said officials should look upstream, where the McKenzie cut through land at a meander north of Thurston Road, near 66th Street, a few years ago. He said the migrating channel ate up acres of farmland, and destroyed a new home.

"Thurston was the lesson," he said. "These meanders can and do avulse."

Stephens said that during the public comment periods, Rodriguez never introduced scientifically valid evidence to counter experts hired by PeaceHealth.

When asked on Monday on what basis he intended to appeal, given that state and local laws don't require a channel migration study, Rodriguez declined to comment.

PeaceHealth earlier this year settled with its two major opponents, and the path to building the regional medical center appeared clear until Rodriguez stepped up with his notice of appeal.

Springfield code would allow PeaceHealth to move forward with construction while the appeal is pending, Stephens said.

But if the Land Use Board of Appeals found for Rodriguez, PeaceHealth would be responsible for removing any structures it had erected in the meantime.