To help safeguard residents, their homes, businesses and transportation corridors that are vital to the region’s economy, King County will cut trees along its Green River levees in Kent and Tukwila before flood-prevention barriers are installed in advance of flood season.

Beginning Wednesday, King County crews will cut approximately 360 trees from the levees, which are all scheduled for major rehabilitation over the next three to four years.

Cutting the trees now ensures that King County will remain eligible for federal flood damage repair funding. The work also needs to be done before advanced flood-fighting measures, such as large sandbags, are placed along the levee tops.

Rebuilding levees along the Green River has taken on a greater sense of importance since last winter, when heavy rainfall led to restrictions on how much floodwater the Howard Hanson Dam can retain in the upper Green River Valley.

King County, the Green River Valley cities, plus state and federal agencies have been working together to ensure the highest-possibly level of safety for Green River Valley residents while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moves forward with repairs at the dam.

Roughly half of the trees slated for cutting are small-diameter poplars that are concentrated in one patch along a levee in Tukwila. The remaining trees are scattered along a few miles’ worth of levees that run upstream into Kent.

The trees scheduled for removal are in areas where levee reconstruction projects are scheduled over the next three to four years. The trees must be removed prior to those projects, and levee reconstruction includes replanting areas with native vegetation.

The tree-cutting work will lead to intermittent and brief closures of the Green River Trail through portions of Tukwila and Kent – from roughly 220th Street in Kent downstream to roughly South 180th Street in Tukwila.

Levees along King County rivers help protect some of the most important economic centers in Western Washington.

King County’s flood protection system includes more than 119 miles of levees that protect lives and more than $7 billion in economic infrastructure inside the county’s 25,000 acres of floodplain.