Mark Mulvihill stands on a gravel bar formed by McKay Creek. When Mulvihill grew up in the neighborhood, he would have been standing in the creek instead of on a bar with vegetation growing on it.

When Mark Mulvihill returned to Pendleton’s McKay Creek neighborhood three years ago, he consulted with the Federal Emergency Management Agency while building his house.

After keeping his house and workshop away from the creek and deciding against building a basement at his Southwest Kirk Avenue property, he was assured that nothing like the 1991 McKay Creek flood would happen again.

The line of dead grass where the creek nipped at his backyard more than a month ago acts as evidence that those assurances weren’t enough.

The April flooding along McKay Creek that put Community Park underwater and flooded area basements and yards has long ago dried, but it’s still on the minds of some of its residents.

McKay Creek residents are now banding together to demand preventative measures against future floods and a seat at the table among the vast network of government bureaucracies that govern the creek.

On a bright Tuesday afternoon, Mulvihill, who works as the superintendent of the InterMountain Education Service District, invited Umatilla County Commissioner John Shafer, Kirk Avenue neighbor Bill Wohlford, and Todd Armstrong, a friend of Wohlford’s and a concerned citizen with creek restoration experience, to his home.

Without the threat of encroaching waters, Mulvihill’s green backyard soundtracked by the creek below looked and sounded idyllic.

But Mulvihill beckoned his guests to the back of his property, which extends across the creek toward Community Park.

Mulvihill gathered the group on an elevated gravel bar that didn’t used to exist. The force of the flood eroded the banks, creating gravel bars up and down the creek and sheer cliffs along Community Park.

The concrete walls that used to help channel the creek now sit helplessly in the newly formed creek bed.

Unlike the flood in 1991, no one was forced from their homes in a mandatory evacuation.

But Mulvihill and Wohlford say the damage may be longer lasting because of how long the flooding remained.

Further erosion along the banks of McKay Creek could further threaten Community Park and the residents who call the neighborhood home.

Mulvihill said McKay Creek homeowners have long been excluded from the conversations over McKay Creek and the dam and reservoir that feed it.

But he was encouraged by a recent meeting he attended, which featured representatives from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners, the city of Pendleton, and the offices of Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Greg Walden.

Out of that meeting, Mulvihill said the group is working toward four goals: update the instruments that measure intake at McKay Reservoir, restore the banks along McKay Creek, establish new diversions for reservoir overflow, and perform a new capacity study at the dam.

The dam is supposed to hold more than 65,000 acre feet, mostly for irrigation and steelhead habitat, but the McKay residential group suspects sediment build-up has reduced how much it can hold.

Even before 1991, McKay Creek has a long history of flooding. In 1958, the East Oregonian reported that the governor was calling in the National Guard to “tame the rampaging waters.”

In 1906, 23 years before the McKay Dam finished construction, one resident reported that the waters in McKay Creek were the highest she had ever seen as the waterways across the area flooded town.

Mulvihill said he’s heard the argument that flooding is to be expected when he and his neighbors live in the floodplain, and it makes his blood boil.

Unlike the Umatilla River, Mulvihill said McKay Creek has an element of human control because of the dam.

And Mulvihill and his cohort argue that McKay Creek serves a wider community purpose.

Although he would advise against it this year because of the sharp debris that washed through the creek, Armstrong, the concerned citizen, said the creek is usually a hot tubing spot for local children.

And Community Park is already a popular gathering and recreational spot where Pendleton Parks and Recreation holds its annual Movies in the Park series.

“It’s like a water Round-Up,” he said.

With the continuing onset of climate change increasing the likelihood of future flooding, Mulvihill said the only way they’ll be able to prevent future flooding is through community support.

“Water is unforgiving,” he said.

The neighborhood’s effort has already found allies among local government officials.

Pendleton Mayor John Turner was at the stakeholder meeting, and he said it’s within the city’s best interest to continue to participate in the group.

Shafer, the county commissioner, said he viewed the county as a facilitator between residents and the several layers of government bureaucracy the community will need to navigate to reach its goals.

It won’t be a quick task.

Mulvihill bemoaned the “acronym soup” of government agencies that have a stake in the creek, and Wohlford said he’s already been in contact with five agencies to get a permit to work on a gravel bar near his property — and he still hasn’t gotten a clear answer as to who will issue it.

Mulvihill said the problems facing McKay Creek likely won’t be solved in 2019 or 2020.

But he already feels like there’s more momentum to fix them than the last flood 18 years ago.