New dike needed now

Wow! Did we dodge a bullet or what?! That firehose hit us, but the worst of the rains landed in the Frazier River watershed. If what the Canadians got lambasted by had fallen just thirty miles further south, the Skagit River could have been in our face, not in the channel of our choosing. The levees held, but now they’re heavily saturated, a bit mushy at their base.

It’s very early in the flood season, so we should not be complacent. If the river got any higher for any longer, we could have been in for a wet surprise: the library project could have become a community swimming pool.

Building th...