COEUR d'ALENE - Maintenance work on Coeur d'Alene's Rosenberry Drive flood levee has been underway for more than a week, with city crews focusing on tree removal and slope restoration.

Coeur d'Alene City Engineer Gordon Dobler said the work done this winter is the first step in an estimated year-long process to get the levee certified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

With the exception of a few large trees that will need to be removed by an outside contractor, Dobler said the maintenance work is going "well" and he doesn't foresee the need for any additional labor.

"We wanted it to be a pilot project to see if it was something our city crews could really even handle, and it turns out we can," Dobler said.

Dobler added that the city does not plan on having its employees perform the maintenance work on the North Idaho College side of the levee and will meet with the college to see how those repairs will be accomplished.

Ruen Yeager and Associates, a third-party engineering firm hired by the city to certify the levee, identified approximately 380 trees that need to be removed. Some of the trees slated for removal are dead, diseased or thinned, Dobler said.

"Other trees require removal because they would jeopardize the integrity of the levee should they fall over during a major storm event," he added.

Additional trees might need to be removed due to the slope restoration efforts, which involve "scraping off" shrubs, grass, or topsoil on the Coeur d'Alene levee - commonly known as Dike Road - and filling in the holes and depressions left behind. Any trees in the path of where city crews need to fill will be removed, since filling on the trunk of a tree would kill it.

"I don't anticipate a ton more, but there will be a few more for that reason," Dobler said.

During the maintenance, the Coeur d'Alene Street Department has been routing traffic around the work areas and for safety reasons, parking has been prohibited in areas where city crews are working.

"We don't really anticipate that we will need to close the roads unless there are a bunch of dead trees that have to come out," Dobler said.

This summer, Dobler said, crews plan on repairing portions of the levee to address structural issues brought up in the engineering firm's findings. He added that maintenance work could continue through the winter of 2015.