Current Conditions
Located within May Creek Park, the Railroad Embankment over Newport Hills Creek (embankment) is a historic railroad bridge built and used during Newcastle's coal-mining era. Under the embankment Newport Hills Creek flows through a 24" clay vitrified pipe culvert that is approximately 212 feet long. Flow into the culvert is obstructed by a primitive control structure (standpipe), which created an artificial pond on the north side (upstream) of the embankment. When water in the pond is at the level of the standpipe, the pond holds 15 acre-feet of water. If the pond level were to reach the top of the embankment the pond would hold 120 acre-feet of water, the equivalent of 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools. If the embankment were to breach or fail, the water would travel for 800 feet downstream to May Creek, and then for another 2.5 miles before it reaches Lake Washington.
The embankment is considered a dam and is on Washington State's dam inventory. A periodic inspection by Washington State Department of Ecology's Dam Safety Office (DSO) in 2018 indicated that the embankment is in poor condition. Over the past few years the standpipe has become blocked, which has caused dramatic increases and decreases in the pond depth. The design of the standpipe is unknown. As a result, the pond depth dramatically increased during the December 2019 and the February 2020 storm events. Due to the unknown construction and stability of the embankment, combined with the inability to control the pond depth, action must be taken to prevent a catastrophic failure of the embankment.