ARLINGTON — The daylight basement has a river view.
You just have to look past the white stakes, yellow caution tape and tarp-covered cliffside less than 10 feet from the back door.
The other 20 feet of the Mott family’s backyard has sloughed away. The remnant lump of rocks, mud and tangled plants now lies three stories below at the base of a cliff, braced against the current of the South Fork Stillaguamish River.
“That’ll all wash away,” homeowner Rob Mott said.
When he and his wife, Cathie Dunne-Mott, bought the house in Arlington’s Jordan River Trails neighborhood in 1982, it never occurred to him that the backyard full of cedar trees would disappear. He’s hoping that Snohomish County will approve a buyout for the house before it, too, tumbles down the bank.
“It’s amazing how fast the river changes.”
Floods are Western Washington’s most predictable natural hazard, apt to make an appearance from fall to spring in any given year. The problems include rising flood waters as well as erosion undercutting banks, like the one below Mott’s house on the east side of the Stilly.
Every summer the stretch of the Stilly near a pedestrian-suspension bridge turns into a highway for rafts and inner tubes.
The winter flood season is less predictable and more dramatic. Mott’s seen the swift water make off with some unexpected prizes.
“I saw a refrigerator floating down there once,” he recalled. “And somebody’s front porch.”
Local rivers can claim entire houses. In recent history, it’s happened at a rate of nearly one a year.
Earlier this month, a Gold Bar home toppled into a flood-swollen Wallace River and floated away upside down. In years past, houses have washed into the Skykomish River near Index and the North Fork Stillaguamish near Darrington.
“This county has always been recognized as one of the most flood-prone areas in the nation,” county emergency management director John Pennington said.
Since 1978, the county has accounted for a total of nearly $21.8 million in flood-claim payouts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, figures show. That’s more than anywhere in Washington outside of Lewis County, on the I-5 corridor south of Olympia.
Communities grew up along Snohomish County’s river valleys long before the dangers were fully appreciated.
The regulatory framework started taking shape only after Congress enacted a federal flood insurance program in 1968 — a year after Mott’s home was built.
Until 1984, there was little to speak of in the way of detailed maps or data for gauging flood risk. The county didn’t step in to prevent people from building too close to rivers until the 1990s, when it adopted its first critical areas ordinance.
Federal safety net
Getting people out of flood danger zones has been a long, slow and expensive effort. Federal grant money sometimes provides a way for Snohomish County to step in before things get dangerous.
Houses built in hazard areas before flood maps were drawn up in the 1980s are the most likely to receive federal safety grants.
“Those are the ones that tend to flood more severely,” said David Wilson, a Snohomish County public works engineer who oversees buyout applications.
Over the past decade, the county has used $2.3 million in FEMA grants to buy out properties in danger of flooding. The money paid for purchasing 14 houses plus post-buyout work such as demolition, removing septic systems and capping wells.
Three of the buyouts were along the Skykomish River, including one owned by a couple in their 70s who watched with apprehension as neighboring homes washed away or were relocated. They were able to move to Monroe in 2013. There’s little trace of their former home on Skyko Drive, now that the county has demolished it and replanted the area.
A fourth buyout was for a home on the Snoqualmie River.
Buyouts of another 10 homes in an area that was known as Chatham Acres Country Club were completed in 2005, a few years after being initiated. The area lies about four miles up the North Fork Stillaguamish River from Steelhead Haven, where 43 people were killed during last year’s mudslide.
Before the deadly slide, policymakers had considered flooding to be the most urgent natural danger along the North Fork Stilly. After a smaller slide blocked the river at Steelhead Haven in 2006, county officials discussed buyouts with nearby homeowners. Those conversations followed the successful buyout of the Chatham Acres houses, which at the time was viewed as a higher priority, in part because the river already was cutting a new path through the neighborhood there.
Flooding, more than landslides, was the impetus for discussing buyouts at Steelhead Haven, county documents show.
The county is now seeking FEMA’s help to purchase $12.8 million worth of property in the slide zone. That buyout encompasses 135 parcels. The county hopes to hear back from FEMA this spring.
Buyouts vs. mitigation
Buying properties isn’t the county’s only option. Federal grants also can help move homes or make them more resistant to flood damage.
During the past decade, the county has directed $780,000 in FEMA grants toward projects designed to raise houses on new foundations that put them above 100-year flood levels. The seven homes that benefited from the program are spread throughout river valleys near Monroe, Snohomish, Arlington and Stanwood.
“Home elevations tend to be cheaper, but they’re more of a short-term solution,” Wilson said. “They’re still vulnerable to large flood events.”
Not all homes are good candidates to be moved.
Mott’s house, for example, would lose its finished basement and about half of the living space. Raising it wouldn’t make any sense, either. That’s because the bank it sits on is eroding away.
A year ago, Mott called Snohomish County for help. He’s been in regular contact since.
His house is among seven the county considers good candidates for future buyouts. Three other homes are contenders for elevation projects.
Separately, the county is reviewing an application to help pay for relocating Teresa and Lance Shaw’s Snohomish-area home away from the Pilchuck River, which is eating away at the cliff below. The couple also has sought private donations.
There’s no guarantee money will come through for any of the buyouts — or in what time frame.
Homeowners often start the application process and don’t follow through, Wilson said. Sometimes, it’s because they’ve found a buyer on the private market.
“As much as you see the flood danger, these homes sell and the cycle starts all over again,” Wilson said.
Flood insurance rate hikes have discouraged some transactions, in ways that natural hazards haven’t.
“Those homes have become harder to sell,” he said.
Erosion inevitable
The first tree behind Mott’s house tumbled into the river in the 1990s. The erosion started gradually, with a tree going into the river every year or two.
“It was pretty stable up until a couple years ago, when the rest of the trees fell in,” he said.
Mott and his wife no longer live in the threatened house. They moved in 2008 to a new home built on the lot next door.
It’s as close to the river as current county code allows, and that’s a full house-length farther back than their previous residence.
The precariously-placed four-bedroom, two-bathroom home is now being rented by their daughter. She lives there with her husband and two young sons. The younger couple once considered buying the home, but that was before their basement window looked out on caution tape and a cliff.
The county yellow-tagged the property this past fall. That serves as a warning that the structure has been compromised, but can still be occupied.
A geotechnical surveying company Mott hired estimated the Stilly would wash out the rest of the land around the home’s foundation in two to five years.
To forestall the erosion, the Motts have followed advice from surveyors to plant ivy, willow trees, snowberries and other root plants that help hold loose soil together. They laid down a black tarp to minimize the damage of water runoff streaming over the side of the cliff. That will likely be replaced with a more long-lasting, environmentally friendly netting, Mott said.
If the county buys the property, the house would be removed and the land would become open space, with more plantings to stabilize the bank.
There would be little left to mark the home the Mott family moved into 32 years ago.
Much can change in three decades, in the natural landscape and the regulatory one.
“When we first bought it, we had no idea,” Mott said. “We had a lot of riverbank, so we didn’t think it was anything to worry about.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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