Kenmore residents, city dealing with another potential Wild Cliff Shores flooding problem

With the season of the year moving toward winter, Jay Arroyo is starting to worry.

For the Pacific Northwest, winter usually equals rain. And for Arroyo and other residents of Kenmore's Wild Cliff Shores subdivision, rain often has equaled flooding.

For instance, last year, the small, apparently unnamed creek that runs just a few yards from Arroyo's back door on Northeast 171st Lane overflowed its banks by more than little.

Arroyo has video showing water flowing throughout his back yard, reaching roughly up to his knees. In this instance, the Northshore Fire Department came to the rescue, he said, showing up at 2 a.m. to help put sandbags along the creek.

Those sandbags are still in place and Arroyo said residents have come to look on them as sort of an insurance policy against the creek. But Arroyo said the subdivision now faces a new problem. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has stated the bags represent an illegal altering of a fish-bearing stream, and as such, they have to go.

Arroyo added, to further complicate things, the state has said that while the subdivision needs a permit to put up the sandbags, they also need one to take them down. Both permits cost money and, reportedly, neither is easily obtained.

In the long run, in order to keep the sandbags in place and possibly make other alterations to the creek such as removing silt build-up, Wild Cliff might have to do an environmental study with a price tag of $50,000 to $70,000, money Arroyo said the homeowners just don't have.

"We just feel as if we are stuck," he said. "We don't know what to do. How are we supposed to protect our homes?"

According to Arroyo, the state's involvement all hinges on its contention the stream is fish-bearing. But Arroyo insists residents have not seen fish in the creek for many years. On a day last week, the waterway was a trickle, barely an inch deep. Arroyo asked repeatedly if a reasonable person would conclude the small flow could support fish.

At the state level, Arroyo said he and the subdivision's homeowners group have had the most contact with Fish and Wildlife habitat biologist Ginger Holser.

Holser said she was indeed familiar with the situation, but said as there is a possible violation of state law involved, she is not allowed to comment on the issue. Fish and Wildlife officials in Olympia did not respond to a couple of phone calls.

Arroyo said the subdivision has yet another problem. In December 2007, a Simonds Road culvert was simply overwhelmed with water, the result being a flood that reached all the way to Wild Cliffs, which sits a few blocks away and on the opposite side of Simonds Road from the culvert.

The flooding deposited what Arroyo said turned out be about nearly 40 tons of silt and dirt in the subdivision. As the subdivision is private property, Kenmore officials said the clean-up was the homeowners' problem. Arroyo said the bill for that clean-up, sent to the homeowners group, reached upwards of $12,000.

Arroyo feels the culvert might be the root of many of Wild Cliff's problems. He said every time the culvert fails, the subdivision floods.

"We have talked to the city several times and we always get the same answer: It (the subdivision) is private property, it's not our problem," Arroyo said.

Kenmore City Manager Frederick Stouder said he toured the area last fall with the city engineer and at least one other local official. He said city representatives also met twice with the Wild Cliffs' homeowners group. He said the city agreed to keep the culverts clean and has taken steps in that direction.

"We think we're on top of that," Stouder said.

He added that looking at the bigger picture, Kenmore sits at the bottom of the Swamp Creek Watershed, 95 percent of which sits outside the city's boundaries and is therefore, obviously, out of the city's control. Stouder said Kenmore has an outside consulting firm looking at the problem now.

"In an ideal world, with these studies, in the next year or two, there will be some solutions to the problems that affect us all," Stouder said.

He added that lastly, the city intends to mount a sort of Swamp Creek summit, hoping to bring together representatives from all the various jurisdictions involved.

"This is a regional issue that follows geography, not political boundaries," Stouder said.

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