Oregon Public Broadcasting

The 2000 residents of Stanfield, Oregon, are officially out of the floodplain.

Stanfield is a small city about 20 miles west of Pendleton.

In August, the Federal Emergency Management Agency told city officials that a new map had been approved, removing the entire city from the floodplain.

And Thursday, the city finalized some of the payments for the project.

Ethan Lindsey reports from Stanfield.

Stanfield’s Main Street also happens to be the highway you’d take between Pendleton and Hermiston.

The owners of the local antique store, The Elephant’s Trunk, paid $800 every year in federally-required flood insurance.

Standing here, it’s quickly evident that it's busy – and loud. But the downtown shopping area is small, even by Eastern Oregon standards. That’s because, until now, it’s been really expensive to live and work in Stanfield.

David Stevens: “Financially, you know, taxes and insurance, it’s held back a lot of businesses from coming, because of the insurance."

For the past 12 years, David Stevens has owned and operated the Elephant’s Trunk antiques shop on the corner of Main and Coe streets.

The city’s downtown main street, all city buildings, two schools, and two-thirds of the homes were located in the 100-year floodplain of the small Stage Gulch creek. And that means they were legally required to buy flood insurance.

Across the street from the antiques store is a small bank.

Its foundation is built on stilts, sitting several feet above street level. To drive thru the ATM, you have to drive up and down a ramp.

The bank avoids paying flood insurance because of that.

Stevens, at the Elephant’s Trunk, says his insurance ran about $800 per year.

Mayor Tom McCann worked tirelessly, for 15 years, to get FEMA to lift the floodplain.

Tom McCann is the mayor of Stanfield.

Tom McCann: “I guess you’d classify us as being a bedroom community for the city of Hermiston. Our city limits are two-tenths of a mile apart, and we’re primarily an ag area – a farm community.”

The small irrigation creek, Stage Gulch, runs by downtown – and in high water years, it can overflow, as can the Umatilla River.

Tom McCann: “First year I was here, the water came up just level with my floor furnace grate, under the house. It obliterated my garage floor.”

Over the past 50 years, the city has flooded multiple times.

There are yellowing photos from 1964, of residents paddling down Main Street.

McCann was first elected 14 years ago, on the campaign promise to raise the city out of the floodwaters.

He’s won every election since, on the same campaign promise.

Tom McCann: “It’s taken a while, and it’s been a long process and at a lot of times, a real frustrating process.”

But the city’s pioneering efforts to remove itself from the floodplain may become a model for other cities around the country.

In order to get out of the floodplain, the city had to, basically, build a channel for high waters to flow through.

Between 1995 and 1999, the city bought out and tore down 27 homes located next to the gulch. In place of the homes, the city built sports fields and park space.

An aerial map of Stanfield.

Brett Moore: “The creek runs, year around, we get fish coming up here out of the Umatilla River, there’s kids fishing in it, and they keep it as a parkway.”

Brett Moore is an engineer with La Grande-based Anderson Perry & Associates.

He says with federal and state grants, the city built 6 new bridges, and constructed several levees along the floodway.

After 10 years of work, Moore says in 2007 the project seemed just days away from completion.

Brett Moore: “And then what happened was a little thing called Katrina.”

Hurricane Katrina, and the failed Army Corps of Engineers levees in New Orleans, altered the federal policies on floodplains and levees.

After that, Moore says the city had to convince FEMA that the levees were sound.

City Engineer Brett Moore stands in the new floodway, the city constructed to direct overflowing water away from buildings. He explains that the only building left in the floodplain is the local church.

Brett Moore: “It was the first. And that’s why we kept asking the FEMA folks. Do you have an example? Do you have a guidance document? And that’s why so many of them were interested in what we came up with. Because it’s never been done before in the United States. We were the first.”

Mayor Tom McCann says he has a vision for what the downtown will look like in a couple of years.

Tom McCann: “You’ll probably see small shops, of different types, I think that as the area starts to evolve and change, it's going to be better for the businesses that are here, as well as future businesses.”

Six young men kick around a ball on the city’s new downtown soccer fields, alongside the creek.

They say they always wondered about the 3-foot-high dirt walls on two sides of the field.

They say it’s so open and scenic, they had no idea this was actually a channel built as a floodway.