> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # ๐Ÿšฑ The Flood Bingen Can't Talk About - Bingen July '26 Round-up - URL: https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/the-flood-bingen-cant-talk-about-bingen-july-26-round-up-2/ - Published: 2026-08-14T07:00:09.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-14T21:40:26.000Z - Description: Forty residents packed Bingen's July 7 meeting over the businesses still closed since April's water main break. The city's lawyer said it could not respond to any of it. Two weeks later the city answered in writing, and a resident called the answer a lie. - Author: Dispatch Squatch - Tags: Bingen, Bingen City Council, Klickitat County *Prefer to listen to a podcast? Check out the* [*audio edition on Buzzsprout*](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2605109/episodes/19594850?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, or look for "Open Gorge" wherever you get your podcasts* ## ๐Ÿ› July 2026 Bingen Municipal Round-Up **Agencies Covered:** Bingen City Council (July 7 and July 21). **The Bottom Line:** The April 15 water main break stopped being an infrastructure story in July and became a political one. Residents filled the July 7 meeting to demand the city do something about three downtown restaurants still closed; the city's attorney told them it could not say a word, because someone had threatened to sue. Two weeks later Bingen answered in a written press release, added a standing flood-recovery item to every future agenda, and got its answer publicly disputed at the same meeting. **The Vibe:** Two meetings that could not have been less alike. July 7 was the angriest room Bingen has produced in this archive's memory, and the council sat through it under legal instruction to stay silent. July 21 was the city talking back, carefully, in writing, and then going back to fences and treasurer's reports. ### ๐Ÿ”Ž What Changed - Council added a **standing "Downtown Flood Recovery Update"** to every future agenda, and issued a **written press release on July 20** laying out the city's account of the delay. That is the first substantive thing Bingen has said publicly about the break since litigation was threatened, and the city has followed through: it is item 5 on the posted August 4 agenda. - Council swapped artists on the roundabout boat sculpture, **dissolving the contract with CJ Rench and hiring Whit Poor**, a local colleague Rench recommended, on the same terms and the same August 1 deadline. - Council signed a **FacetNW contract to draft the Critical Areas Ordinance amendment**: $3,500 base, plus $2,500 charged only if the city needs more support or GIS work. - Council approved job descriptions for **both Public Works positions**, which come open when the city's two-person crew retires within a day of each other in spring 2027. - The BNSF **Quiet Zone diagnostic site visit finally happened** on July 21, four and a half years after the city started asking. ### โš  What Escalated - **The flood recovery.** Roughly forty residents attended July 7\. Council extended public comment by 20 minutes to hear them. One commenter told Council a recall petition under state law could remove all of them, and said he was willing to file it. - **The Quiet Zone timeline.** Per the July 21 recording, a quiet zone hoped for next summer is now two summers out, and the $2.2 million in hand was described at the meeting as the bare minimum. - **One of the businesses is already gone.** Mugs Coffee announced a permanent closure and a search for a new location on June 5, per Columbia Gorge News. The recovery everyone argued about on July 7 is a recovery for three of the four affected businesses, not four. - **The city's own comment box.** Public comments submitted through Bingen's website had not been reaching staff since the platform changed in November 2025\. It surfaced only because a resident said he had sent a letter and the administrator could not find it. ### ๐Ÿงญ What's Next - **August 4, 6:00 p.m.:** next regular Council meeting. The posted agenda carries the July 21 minutes for approval, the first **Downtown Flood Recovery Update** as item 5, a **Klickitat County radio system and 911 dispatch services agreement**, a second preliminary review of the fence ordinance, and a Riverview CD discussion. - **August 6:** revised completion date for the East Steuben Waterline replacement, pushed back after the contractor hit rock, per the July 21 recording. - **August 2026:** first meeting of the new Building Committee. - **August 31:** the city's consultant is due to deliver the draft Critical Areas Ordinance amendment and its best-available-science memo, per the July 21 recording. A public hearing is penciled for November 3 and adoption for December 15. --- ## Bingen City Council ### ๐Ÿ’ง The Flood the City Could Not Discuss On July 7 the audience list in the minutes runs to 38 names. They came for one thing: the businesses that have been closed since April 15, when a contractor working on the city's SR-14 crosswalk project struck an 8-inch PVC water main and flooded downtown. We covered the break itself in [April](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/water-main-breaks-red-rag-clog-mystery-in-bingen-april-26/), including the detail that came out of the city's own April discussion: the line was put in during 2000 without a locate wire. City Attorney Chris Lanz set the terms before the first question landed. Because litigation has been threatened, he said, "we are in a position where we cannot pick and choose what we can and cannot say, we have to make no comment." Betty Barnes asked whether it had been a state project. No answer. She asked who the contractor was. "You could certainly ask that question, but again, cannot make any comment." Administrator Krista Loney put it more plainly later in the meeting: "If somebody hadn't threatened litigation, this could be an open discussion. Because they have, we can't say anything." The silence was not, by then, protecting a secret. Two days later [Columbia Gorge News named the firm](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/business-owners-demand-action-to-address-bingen-water-main-break-flooding-damages/article%5F16076d12-1736-4e1f-b5e9-355e4076fce6.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io): "While digging downtown April 15, GradeWerks Excavating struck a water main, flooding downtown streets and businesses," Sean Avery reported, adding that the dig went ahead on the city's outdated water line maps, "which showed the locate mark five feet away from the main line." Bingen's own February 3 minutes record the SR-14 crossing contract going to Grade Werks at $193,380\. Council could not answer Barnes, but the answer was already in the paper and in the city's own record. So the council listened for half an hour. What they heard, in the speakers' own words from the typed minutes: - **Diane Murphy**, co-owner of Chips Bar and Grill and Murphy's Family Watering Hole, said three downtown restaurants "are still closed with no timeline of when we can reopen, no timeline," and that the closure of Chips, Mugs and Carmen's is costing all of them their most profitable season. Her central claim is about money, not sympathy: after months of back and forth, she said, the city's insurance pool is "requiring us all to front the construction costs for the recovery ourselves and will supposedly reimburse us at a later date." Small owners, she said, cannot finance that. - **Larry Murphy** said the restoration crews had the spaces torn out and ready to rebuild by May 22 but could not get paid for work already done. "As I said, this happened in April and we're in the first part of July." - **Diane Buckley**, four years at Chips, has been out of work three months. "I'm thankful to say that I had savings to fall back on. Had I not, I don't know what would have happened." - **Sandi Dickey**, who runs two small businesses, described the street: "when I get up early in the morning and I go to work, there is not a car in town, not one car." - **Glen Pritchard**, owner of Studio CBC Windows + Doors on Depot Street, submitted a written comment printed in the packet. Nearly three months on, the showroom that supports 12 employees is still gone. "We have done everything asked of us," he wrote, listing mitigation, cooperation with the insurers, and complete claim documentation. "Every additional week of delay is another week of harm." - **Clinton Deo** went furthest. Citing state law on recall petitions, he told Council that "a petition can be done to remove everyone on the city council and the mayor and if that is what we have to do, that is what we will do." He framed it as a communication failure rather than a fault question. - **Jason McKim** was the dissenting voice in the room and got shouted at for it. He tried to list the actually available options and argued that "we should remember that there are limited options of what can be done." When he suggested the city could front the money, Loney answered in two words: "It's illegal." Ten more comments arrived by email and through the website, from Bingen and from White Salmon, and are printed in full in the minutes. ### What is actually blocking this: Loney's two-word answer is the load-bearing fact of the whole story, and it is not a dodge. The Washington constitution prohibits cities from giving public funds to private parties, which means Bingen cannot lend the businesses money, cannot advance the repair costs, and cannot pay a private contractor to do private repairs, no matter how badly the council wants the doors open. The claims run through the Association of Washington Cities Risk Management Service Agency, the insurance pool Bingen belongs to, and the pool deals directly with the owners. The city is a bystander to its own liability. That is why the July 7 meeting produced no motion, no vote, and no answer: there was nothing the council was legally able to offer from that chair. ### ๐Ÿ—ž Two Weeks Later, the City Answers in Writing July 21 opened with an executive session under the pending-litigation exemption, from which Council reported no action taken. Then, per the recording, the city did something it had not done before: it added a standing "Downtown Flood Recovery Update" to every future agenda, and used the first one to read a press release it had issued the day before. The following is the city's account as read aloud on the recording. **Bingen has not posted typed minutes for July 21, so this is machine tier until Council approves them on August 4.** Per that reading, the press release said: a contractor on a city project struck the main on April 15; the insurance pool reviewed the incident, found coverage, and began managing claims; affected owners received claim information within two days; drying and mitigation finished May 5\. Then the part the city clearly wrote the release to say: **the repair contractor, who was selected and hired by the affected owners rather than by the city, did not submit final repair estimates to the insurer until July 6**, and the city names that as the primary reason permanent repairs have not begun. It also said that since April 30 the pool has issued **nearly $170,000 in lost wage payments**, separate from any repair money, and that because the contractor is privately hired the city has no authority to direct its work, approve its scope, or control its schedule. July 6 is the day before the July 7 meeting. If the city's account holds, the estimates landed roughly 24 hours before that room filled up. The written version of the release is [published in full by Columbia Gorge News](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/free%5Fnews/city-of-bingen-response-to-july-7-public-comments-regarding-flooded-downtown-businesses/article%5F1124a016-e4ea-4288-b716-6441333331ae.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io). [Columbia Gorge News, which had a correspondent in the room](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/past-flooding-continues-as-current-topic-at-bingen-city-council-meeting/article%5Fc9a70387-41ad-4af1-9f38-26ce0b6ff360.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io), itemized what the pool has actually paid out. Chips Bar and Grill received $71,440.96 in three checks "to ease the wage loss, based on April, May, and June hours of 2024." Carmen's Kitchen received $82,361.72 and Antiques and Oddities received $1,280.58\. Those three come to $155,083.26, short of the nearly $170,000 the city described, and neither account explains the difference. A payment to Mugs is the obvious candidate. The Antiques and Oddities check is worth noticing on its own. That business rarely comes up in the public argument, but Bingen's own April 21 minutes recorded the damage list as Studio CBC, Carmen's Kitchen, Mugs and Chips, "and a little bit of water in Antiques and Oddities." The small one was on the city's list from the start. It did not go unchallenged. A commenter who said they are a relative of two of the owners, and own none of the businesses themselves, told Council the owners had been forwarding the insurer's own paperwork long before July 6, and called the published account "kind of a lie." They said one of the businesses, Mugs, had already broken its lease because its owner could not carry rent, bills and payroll at once. Columbia Gorge News reported the same outcome more finally on July 9: "Mugs Coffee announced its permanent closure and search for a new location on Facebook June 5." Of the four businesses, one is not coming back to that block. The same speaker said the closed businesses are still receiving city water bills, asked who pays for the water that ran out of the broken main, and raised something forward-looking: the new sidewalk work went in without drains that would keep a future break from running into the same buildings. A second commenter argued the other side. Columbia Gorge News identifies that speaker as resident Brian Mattingly, a local business owner, who "expressed empathy for the affected businesses, but pointed out the risks one assumes as a business owner and the benefits of an emergency plan." **The first speaker is not named here**, because three sources render the name three different ways: Columbia Gorge News has Sherron Murphy, Bingen's own July 7 attendance list has a Sharon Murphy, and the automated transcript produces a third version. Naming them would be a guess. **The gap that has not closed.** The city's position and the owners' position are not actually about the same thing. Bingen's release is about *repair* estimates and when they arrived. The owners' complaint is about *cash flow*: being asked to pay contractors up front and be reimbursed later. Both can be true at once, and nothing said in July resolves the second one. The standing agenda item is the thing to watch, because it commits the city to saying something about this in public every two weeks, litigation or not. ### ๐Ÿš‚ The Quiet Zone Gets Its Site Visit, and Loses a Year Eighteen people stood at Bingen's rail crossings on July 21: BNSF and its engineers, the city and its engineers, the state Utilities and Transportation Commission, the Port of Klickitat, SDS Lumber, and the Federal Railroad Administration. Per the recording, Loney had been waiting four and a half years for that meeting and called it a real step forward. In [June](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/a-green-light-for-the-quiet-zone-bingen-june-26-round-up/) we reported the engineering award that made it possible. Then the engineers laid out the schedule, and the room deflated. Per the recording: four to six months to reach 65% design, four to six weeks for BNSF to review it, two to three more months to 95%, another four to six weeks plus roughly a month to finalize, a petition to the Utilities and Transportation Commission for each crossing that BNSF has to sign, and only then do BNSF's signal people begin, needing at least six months to review and plan and six more to build. A quiet zone the city had hoped for next summer is now, in the words used at the meeting, two summers from now. One councilor pushed back hard, arguing that quad gates are not novel structures and that the soil at a crossing built and rebuilt many times over is not a mystery. The answer given was that the engineering is not just the gates: it is reworking the roads on both sides, widths, medians, and what has to move. **The money is the sharper problem.** The $2.2 million Senator Curtis King restored in Connecting Washington funds, confirmed in the city's own May minutes and sitting in the state's fiscal year 2027 budget, was described at the July 21 meeting as the bare minimum and as cutting it close, and that estimate rests on a 5% design that still carries extras the city expects to drop. If it comes up short, the options named on the record are to close the Walnut Street crossing outright, or to redesign around channelization on Maple, which was said to save somewhere between five and seven hundred thousand dollars. Council also established that half a quiet zone is not a thing you can buy: doing one crossing and not the other still leaves horns sounding, so partial delivery is not an option. Senator King is reported to be working to redirect leftover roundabout money toward the gap. ### ๐Ÿ— Bingen Writes Its First Fence Rules Council took a first, non-hearing look at an amendment to the building and construction title of the municipal code. The headline is that Bingen has never regulated fences at all, and as Loney put it on the recording, the city cannot enforce code it does not have. The draft would allow six feet along rear and side lot lines and five feet along front lot lines, with anything taller requiring a permit. Council spent most of the discussion on whether six is the right number, pointing out that eight-foot fences are already common around town. The resolution reached, per the recording, was not to raise the number but to make the code say out loud that a taller fence is a permit away rather than a prohibition, and to put the wind-load and materials questions to the building official. Corner-lot visibility limits have been in Bingen's code since the 1980s and can be enforced against fences that already exist; other pre-existing fences cannot be reached retroactively. The same amendment folds in state environmental-review definitions and procedural updates. Per the posted August 4 agenda it comes back as a preliminary review again rather than a hearing, so the public hearing on Bingen's first fence rules is still ahead of it. ### ๐ŸŒฒ Critical Areas, and a December Deadline Bingen is in year two of state Commerce grant funding for its periodic update, and the July 7 contract with FacetNW covers drafting the Critical Areas Ordinance amendment and supplying the best-available-science citations behind it. The contract explicitly does not include coordination with agencies and tribes, or GIS analysis; Loney does the first herself and the second would cost extra. Councilor Craig Trummel pressed the question that dominated Bingen's last critical-areas fight: whether the city can again avoid applying Site Potential Tree Height at 200 Years to the buffers around Dry Creek and Jewett Creek. Applied literally, that standard would make some lots partly or entirely unbuildable, which is what the earlier hearings were about. Loney's answer, from the typed minutes, is that she believes the consultant will find best available science supporting Bingen's approach, that mapping tree height is the Department of Natural Resources' job and not the city's to fund, and that if the state pushes back there is both time and grant headroom to pay for more work. Per the July 21 recording, the calendar is: draft ordinance and science memo by August 31, a council workshop, public comment, state environmental review and its own comment period, a public hearing November 3, agency comments due December 1, and adoption targeted December 15. ### ๐Ÿ‘ท Bingen Loses Its Entire Public Works Crew Within a Day Both of Bingen's Public Works staff retire in spring 2027, one day apart. The typed minutes and the recording disagree about which retirement falls on March 31 and which on April 1, so take the season and not the dates. Council approved both job descriptions with one change: the requirement for a valid Washington State driver's license becomes a state-issued license, so an Oregon resident is not excluded. The postings opened internally on July 8 under the union contract, go public if unfilled, and the city intends an August 31 start so the new hires can shadow both retirees from September through March. One of the two roles carries animal control and requires a short specialized academy. Seven months of overlap for two positions is unusually generous for a city this size, and it is the right call: in a two-person shop, the institutional knowledge is the asset. ### ๐Ÿ–ฅ The Comment Box That Was Not Delivering When Bingen changed website platforms in November 2025, the feature that forwarded public comments submitted through the site to the city administrator was never reprogrammed. Comments went in and stopped there. Nobody noticed for eight months, because the failure is invisible from both ends: the resident sees a submission confirmation, and the city sees an empty inbox that looks exactly like a quiet month. It surfaced on July 7 only because Clinton Deo said in person that he had sent a letter, and Loney searched the portal in front of the room and found nothing. The recovered comments are printed in the July 7 minutes. Per the July 21 recording, she then reprogrammed the forwarding, confirmed it was working after a records request came through, and told Council she had transcribed the July 7 public comment "word for word," which is why this month's quotes are unusually good. Worth saying plainly: this is a participation problem, not an IT footnote. For eight months, the channel the city advertises for people who cannot attend in person was not connected to anything. ### ๐ŸŽจ A New Artist for the Roundabout Boat The sculpture for the Bingen Point roundabout changes hands. Per the July 7 minutes, the original contract went to CJ Rench in January, the timeline slipped repeatedly, and Rench relocated, making the work harder to deliver. He recommended a local colleague, Whit Poor, who can produce and install on the existing schedule. Council dissolved the Rench contract by mutual agreement and authorized a new one with Poor on the same terms. **The installation deadline was August 1, 2026**, which has just passed. Next steps for the boat should surface at the August 4 meeting. ### ๐Ÿ“Š The Numbers, Briefly - **Fire.** Chief Carl Spratt reported 31 incidents in June: 5 in Bingen and 26 mutual aid. Two went to state mobilization, the Peterson fire in Alderdale and the Lyle Hill fire. July 4 produced no fire incidents in Bingen, and turnout on Bingen Point was about half its usual size. Per the recording, the season is running roughly a month ahead of schedule. - **Police.** Per the July 21 recording, Sergeant Garique Clifford was on leave, so the administrator presented the logs: May 2026 activity is down by nearly 100 incidents against May 2025 across Bingen and White Salmon combined, with traffic stops down the most. - **Water loss.** Per the July 21 recording, June distribution system leakage was 12.6%, down from 21.4% in May. The city's 8.9% figure is its 2025 **annual** average, the best it has recorded, and not a current monthly number. - **Streets.** Bingen applied to the Transportation Improvement Board for $44,000 to pave the easternmost end of Franklin and $20,350 to overlay Cedar between Humboldt and Franklin after the sidewalk goes in. Applications were due July 31. - **Waterline.** The East Steuben replacement hit substantial rock, pushing completion from the end of July to August 6. - **Treasurer.** Both the May and June reports were approved and the city's books balance to its bank statements. Specific voucher totals are omitted this month: the typed minutes and the two recordings disagree materially on them, and the July 21 minutes will settle it. --- ## โš ๏ธ Editor's Notebook: Broader Context - **The gift of public funds rule is doing the work here, and it is not discretionary.** Article VIII of the Washington constitution bars cities from lending credit or giving money to private parties. It is why a council that plainly wants these businesses open cannot write a bridge loan, and why "just help them" has no legal form in Bingen. The pressure in that room was real and the target was partly wrong. - **A liability pool is not the city's insurance department.** Bingen belongs to a shared risk pool run through the Association of Washington Cities. The pool adjusts claims on its own authority. City staff can escalate, ask, and convene meetings, which is what they did after July 7, but they do not decide what gets paid or when. - **Threatened litigation is a gag, and it cuts both ways.** Once claimants signal a suit, the city's counsel will stop it from commenting on facts, because anything said becomes evidence. That protected the city on July 7 and it also left residents with no answers for two weeks, which is a fair part of why the room turned. The July 20 press release is what the city can say inside that constraint. ## ๐Ÿ›  Jargon Buster - **Gift of public funds:** the state constitutional rule that a city cannot give or lend public money to a private person or business. It is why Bingen cannot advance repair costs even if it wanted to. - **RMSA (Risk Management Service Agency):** the claims arm of the Association of Washington Cities' shared liability pool, which cities join instead of buying commercial insurance. It, not the city, adjusts and pays these claims. - **Quiet zone:** a rail corridor where trains stop routinely sounding their horns, allowed only when crossings are upgraded enough to substitute for the warning. Quad gates are the usual upgrade, and the Federal Railroad Administration has to be satisfied. - **Quad gates:** four crossing arms instead of two, blocking both lanes in both directions so a driver cannot weave around them. - **Site Potential Tree Height at 200 Years (SPTH200):** a method that sets a stream buffer by how tall trees on that site could grow in 200 years. It produces wide buffers, which is why Bingen property owners fought it: on small lots a wide buffer can consume the buildable area. - **Potholing:** digging a small verification hole, usually by vacuum excavation, to physically confirm where a buried utility is before machinery goes in. Bingen mandated it after April 15. --- ## ๐Ÿ“… How to Join & Learn More **Bingen City Council** meets the first and third Tuesday of each month at 6:00 p.m., in person and by Zoom. The next meeting is **Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 6:00 p.m.** The posted agenda carries the first Downtown Flood Recovery Update, approval of the July 21 minutes, an agreement with Klickitat County on radio system use and 911 dispatch services, and a second look at the fence ordinance. - Agendas, minutes and meeting recordings: [City of Bingen AgendaCenter](https://www.bingenwashington.org/AgendaCenter?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) - City Hall: P.O. Box 607, Bingen WA 98605 ยท (509) 493-2122 ยท [administrator@bingenwashington.org](mailto:administrator@bingenwashington.org) - The Zoom link for each meeting is printed on that meeting's agenda. - Public comment is limited to 10 minutes total, three minutes per speaker, unless Council votes to extend it, which it did on July 7. - Written comments can be submitted through the city website or by email to the administrator. If you submitted one through the website between November 2025 and July 2026 and never heard back, send it again. *Prior Bingen coverage:* [*June 2026*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/a-green-light-for-the-quiet-zone-bingen-june-26-round-up/) *ยท* [*May 2026*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/more-clucking-less-honking-bingen-may-26/) *ยท* [*April 2026*](https://skamania-dispatch.ghost.io/water-main-breaks-red-rag-clog-mystery-in-bingen-april-26/) *Columbia Gorge News has covered the flood recovery too, and their reporting is cited above: Sean Avery on the* [*July 7 meeting*](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/business-owners-demand-action-to-address-bingen-water-main-break-flooding-damages/article%5F16076d12-1736-4e1f-b5e9-355e4076fce6.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) *(July 9), Nan Noteboom on the* [*July 21 meeting*](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/news/past-flooding-continues-as-current-topic-at-bingen-city-council-meeting/article%5Fc9a70387-41ad-4af1-9f38-26ce0b6ff360.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io) *(July 28), and the* [*city's own written response*](https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/free%5Fnews/city-of-bingen-response-to-july-7-public-comments-regarding-flooded-downtown-businesses/article%5F1124a016-e4ea-4288-b716-6441333331ae.html?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)*, which they published in full.* --- ### **New on the site: a wind cam at the green buoy** We put a camera on the river. It watches the Columbia at the Underwood green buoy and posts a fresh picture about every five minutes, day and night, so you can check the water before you drive down. The same camera catches the trains, and the page keeps a small gallery of the best paint that rolled past this week. There's a serious job under the fun: every train is recorded and kept for a trailing week, and if one is ever suspected to be involved in a fire, we can provide video on request. Have a look: [https://skamaniadispatch.com/gorge-wind-cam-underwood-green-buoy-river-conditions-updated-every-5-minutes/](https://skamaniadispatch.com/gorge-wind-cam-underwood-green-buoy-river-conditions-updated-every-5-minutes/?ref=skamania-dispatch.ghost.io)