Jefferson County lacks funding for immediate repair, official says

by Elijah Sussman

FORKS — The Hoh River has washed out a section of the Upper Hoh Road, leading to a closure at mile marker 9.7. Jefferson County staff are unsure when it will reopen.

The increased water pressure eroded the bank between the river and the road, leading to the closure Dec. 20, said Eric Kuzma, assistant public works director.

“The river, on the 18th, I think, got up to 30,000 CFS — cubic feet per second,” Kuzma said. “The river typically flows at 3,000 CFS. That’s about half of what we’ve seen it get up to in the past. We’ve seen it get up to 60,000, so huge fluctuation in potential flows, but 30,000 was enough, and has been in the past, to do significant damage.”

Damage to the site is expected to increase as winter storms bring heavy rainfall, Kuzma wrote in an email.

The road is owned and maintained by Jefferson County for the first 12 miles, Kuzma said. The road cuts south from U.S. Highway 101 and eventually reaches Olympic National Park’s Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center.

The park location is heavily trafficked — 104,176 vehicles passed the entrance station in 2024. Visitors can access the park through hikes, the popular “Hall of Mosses” hike and a three-loop campground.

Kuzma said Tuesday he was working on declaring a local emergency for the road failure.

“Typically, the county has declared an emergency, which allows us to streamline procurement processes,” Kuzma said. “The emergency declaration is in the form of a resolution that goes to the board of county commissioners.”

The resolution likely will go before the commissioners at their next scheduled meeting, set for 9 a.m. Monday. Meetings can be attended in person at the Jefferson County Courthouse, 1820 Jefferson St., or accessed via Zoom at https://www.co.jefferson.wa.us/492/Board-of-County-Commissioners.

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“The problem now is that we don’t have any funds,” Kuzma said. “In the past, where we would run out and do these repairs, we’re not going to be able to do that.”

The damage likely will cost about $500,000, Kuzma said. Permitting after the fact, with all of the environmental impact considerations, can take years and incur additional costs, he added.

The county’s roads fund has been struggling, a reality which recently motivated the formation of a transportation benefit district, mapped over unincorporated Jefferson County.

The board of commissioners have the authority to withdraw funds from the general fund to pay for the repair, Kuzma said.

“They have that ability, but I don’t know that they have that money either,” he said.

The county likely will seek support from state and federal funding sources, Kuzma said.

Kuzma emailed the Western Federal Lands Highway Division (WFL), which already is heavily invested in mitigating damage to the road. It can’t offer funding at this time, Kuzma said.

WFL has funded installing dolosse in a number of critically vulnerable sites along the road, Kuzma said. Dolosse are heavy concrete blocks used to mitigate erosion, mostly in ocean contexts. Milepost 9.6 was already marked as a future site for the mitigation strategy, he added.

Another funding source could kick in if a federal state of emergency is declared, Kuzma said. That can occur when a threshold of expense is passed at a state or regional level, not something likely to occur based on the failure of a single road, he added.

FEMA or the Federal Highway Administration’s Emergency Relief Program both have been known to fund emergency repairs following storm events, Kuzma wrote. He added he is not aware of any potential funding from either source.

“There are no Jefferson County residents living upstream from the site,” Kuzma said. “When we did the Undi Road, there’s people living there that lost access. We had to restore access.”

There is a single home above the damage site, seemingly a family’s vacation home, Kuzma said.

South Shore Road at Quinault Lake also is closed now at mile post 1.3, Kuzma said. The other closure is likely to require $500,000 in repairs, in addition to the many expenses that follow.

The county is working with partners to repair the road, Kuzma said. He named the Federal Highway Administration, the City of Forks, the Hoh Tribe, Olympic National Park, The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Western Federal Lands, the state Department of Transportation and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s office as partners.

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