Bark chips that once surrounded the swing sets at Riverfront Park in Hermiston floated away and debris and high floodwater caused damage to structures at the park as a result of last month’s floods.

Walkers and joggers who use Riverfront Park in Hermiston for exercise shouldn’t plan on the park reopening any time soon.

The 16-acre park must undergo a months-long makeover after flood waters decimated the parking lot and driveway, eroded away part of the embankment, damaged the playground and restroom, clogged the irrigation system with silt, toppled trees, cracked paths, deposited literally tons of debris around the park and washed away fencing.

Parks and recreation director Larry Fetter said the estimated cost to restore the park has climbed to almost half a million dollars.

Luckily, the smaller-scale damage done to the park during a flood in 2019 qualified for FEMA funding to repair, so Fetter said the more extensive damage this time should be “way over the threshold.”

“They typically reimburse 75% of the cost, which will be super helpful,” he said.

In the meantime, however, the park is closed for safety reasons. Fetter said the eroded embankment along the river could give way even more if people put their weight on it. Piles of logs and other debris could also present a danger. Fetter said the deep layers of mud over the park have been too “squishy” to bring heavy equipment on so far, but it should be dried out enough by next week for parks staff and inmate work crews to finally get in there and start removing items.

Once the debris is gone, Fetter said the plan is to rebuild the parking lot and playground on the south side of the park, where flood water has typically avoided. The current developed area will then be turned into grass.

“We’re going to relocate as many improvements as we can away from the floodway,” he said.

Fetter said people have asked why the city doesn’t build a levee to protect the park from flooding, but affecting the river channel that way would require permission.

“It’s very difficult to get that permitted, and we very likely wouldn’t be able to get it permitted because parks are generally meant to take on water,” he said.

In that way, the park and adjacent Bureau of Reclamation property did exactly what they were meant to do — the water that they took on was channeled away from homes that could have otherwise flooded.

Fetter said for now crews will do the heavy lifting, but for people who are anxious to help restore the park, there will be plenty for them to do if they show up at Riverfront Park at 9 a.m. on May 2 for the annual “I Love My City” event.

“If people want to roll up their sleeves and work, that would be a good day to do it,” he said.

Over in Echo, the city “didn’t have too much” damage to its own infrastructure, city administrator David Slaght said. There was just a damaged pipe and some damaged roads.

Its residents, however, were hit harder.

“Some of the homes in town are not livable and that’s still being worked on,” Slaght said.

Many people and organizations donated cleaning supplies, and he said they have come in handy as residents have battled homes full of mud and, increasingly, mold.

Echo’s main source of economic support is its agricultural community, Slaght said, but in many cases they were “hurt pretty bad.”

“We’ve got farmers that their pivots don’t have a field to go in,” he said.

Slaght said he believes the flood breaching Interstate 84 helped save parts of town. He had been out helping evacuate people in the early morning hours of the flood, and water had been rising toward homes. When it suddenly dropped back, the emergency scanner he was listening to started reporting the truck crashes on the interstate caused by the sudden appearance of flood water there.

“When it blew across the freeway, it reduced pressure on the southeast side of town, just enough to keep those homes from flooding,” he said.

Slaght said that day, and in the weeks since, it has been humbling to see the way Echo Community Church, Echo School District, Echo Rural Fire Protection District, service organizations, individual volunteers and others had come together to help. He said the county commissioners had also been very helpful through the process.

Farther down the river in Umatilla, flood damage was mostly limited to the Umatilla School District’s athletic complex that flooded after the berm behind the high school was breached.

Superintendent Heidi Sipe said the district was still in “hurry up and wait” mode for assessing and cleaning up the damage. Because Umatilla was at the end of the line for the flood waters that swept through various industrial and residential areas, they have to wait for soil tests measuring contaminants to come back with results before they can begin moving dirt.

“It’s really hard to assess the level of damage until it’s clean enough to do that,” she said. “Right now the track is under several inches of dirt.”

The district’s newest storage shed is alright, but some other storage areas were damaged, and possibly the baseball announcer’s stand. The berm along the river also needs repaired, and Sipe said because it was the school district that originally built it in 1997, it is the district’s responsibility.