EAGLE -- Concerns are still high in Eagle as floodwater continues to inundate the Greenbelt and other areas of town.
Water is overflowing both the Boise River and Dry Creek Canal, sending water into nearby property.
According to KTVB Meteorologist Rick Lantz, warmer weather followed by more precipitation is on the way, which will lead to more snow melting from the mountains and more flooding along the Boise River and the Dry Creek Canal in Eagle.
Eagle Mayor Stan Ridgeway told KTVB on Monday that city leaders and emergency management officials are discussing closing the entire Greenbelt in Eagle, on both the north and south sides of the river.
Heavy winter snow, rapid snow melt, then excessive spring rain sent the Dry Creek Canal spilling over its banks last week, and into nearby yards and pastures.
"Dry Creek hasn't lived up to its name the last couple years. It's stayed wet," Flood Control District #10 Manager Mike Dimmick said.
"Never seen it this high. It's always stayed within the banks," one Eagle resident whose home backs up to the canal, Robert Wagner, told KTVB. "When we had the 1.4 inches of rain [last week] it just broke the banks and flooded all these yards back here."
Wagner said water was pooling up in their yard and some of their neighbors' yards. He says he somewhat expected this phenomenon because they were informed when they built their home that the lower part of their property was on a flood plain.
Fortunately, homes in Wagner's subdivison, Vizcaya, off Beacon Light Road, and Brookwood, a subdivision off Floating Feather Road and Eagle Road, were built up high enough so that floodwater from the Dry Creek Canal doesn't seep into their homes.
"Just washes a lot of trash and branches and stuff in there. [I'll] go by and pick it up, clean it up when the water finally goes down."
The water has receded a bit since this weekend and the pond engulfing his yard has shrunk by about half. Wagner says he's not too concerned, as this situation is "just part of life here".
"There are no controls on Dry Creek," Dimmick told KTVB. "Dry Creek is whatever Mother Nature is going to do. That's what we have to take down Dry Creek."
Dimmick says the snowpack behind Stack Rock below Bogus Basin that feeds into Dry Creek has gone down quite a bit.
"The snowpack is about gone so we don't expect it to get too much higher than it is now unless we get a rain like we did last Thursday. In which case it will come up again," Dimmick added. "If it's a lot of rain like 1.4 inches we had the other day, or if it's an extended rain and warm temperatures, then it will come high for a while."
So flood controllers are keeping a close eye on the area near Dry Creek Canal, watching for overflow in low-lying yards and pastures and even over Eagle Road.
Officials are also monitoring an extremely worrisome situation upstream in Garden City. Not only is rushing water weakening the banks of the Boise River, but it is also eroding the berms of retention ponds at the SunRoc gravel pit along the river.
If the ponds' banks give, we could see a "pit capture" which could re-route flows in the river toward the south channel and send more water spilling into low-lying areas, and possibly Eagle Road just north of Chinden. Crews have been out at SunRoc regularly over the several days working to stabilize and shore up the pond, bringing in rock trucks to build the barrier higher. As sinkholes appear, crews work to plug them.
Boise River flows have gone down a bit. At the Glenwood Bridge on Tuesday night, flows were recorded at 7,800 cubic feet per second (cfs).
Still, with all the standing water along the Greenbelt in Eagle, Mayor Ridgeway tells KTVB officials have been talking about shutting down the Greenbelt within city limits and says the decision on whether they'll do that or not should come down in the next day or two.
Boise Mayor Dave Bieter has already warned people to stay off the Greenbelt entirely in Boise city limits.