Waterlogged Homes High Water Table Flooding Homes In North Spokane And Raising Liability Questions

Last February, water began gushing into Robin Bang’s basement. Three pumps running non-stop weren’t enough to keep the downstairs bedrooms and family room dry.

Soggy carpets squished when stepped on, water marks stained the walls, cracks crept across the ceiling, and mold and mushrooms grew from the floorboards. Constant moisture in the house warped cabinets and walls upstairs. In June, the family fled their Eaglewood home.

“Somebody was sick all the time,” said Bangs.

The house will be offered at public auction on the courthouse steps in early March.

On Five Mile Prairie, Mikkel and Gary Sewell have battled water in their basement for three years. A month after they moved in, water began leaking into the basement, soaking the carpets and lapping against the walls.

The couple ripped out wallboard halfway up the wall so it wouldn’t rot.

A pump ran constantly, from January through July, draining 10,000 gallons of water from their Eng Heights home each day.

They learned their home was built on an underground spring.

“We are trying to pump a river,” said Mikkel Sewell.

The stories are dramatic, but not unique in some areas on the North Side.

In Eaglewood, east of the Newport Highway, there are at least a dozen homes with flooded basements, failed septic fields and constantly running pumps.

Gene St. Godard, an Eaglewood resident, said there are 60 or 70 more homes that could flood.

On Five Mile, a casual survey by the neighborhood council last spring revealed 74 flooded basements and yards.

In both neighborhoods, residents say the flooding was well known, even documented, long before the houses were built.

The high water table made Five Mile Prairie an ideal place to farm. Irrigation was unnecessary. Longtime residents tell of seasonal ponds that rise and disappear. A neighborhood plan for the prairie, written 20 years ago, warned about the potential for flooding.

Some who grew up on the prairie even tell of ice skating in the winter on a pond near where the Sewells’ house now stands.

The Sewells are still living in the house, even though it’s beginning to show signs of structural damage. Realtors have told them the house is unsellable.

They are suing the builder, Condron Construction, and have the home on the market.

“The house is for sale, I’m accepting offers, ” said Sewell, who would like to be free of the house.

A few years ago, flooding was so heavy at Lincoln Street and Five Mile Road, resident Brian Hall saw a neighbor paddling his canoe down the street. Hall took pictures.

In Eaglewood, residents also say the county has known about the flooding potential for the last 20 years. They have documents from the early 1980s pointing to water problems.

“The county knew about poor drainage in the area,” said neighbor Tom Lynch. Yet the homes were approved with the usual storm-water remedies.

One remedy was a detention pond, where stormwater could collect and sink into the ground or evaporate. When groundwater in the neighborhood filled to the brim, like an overflowing saucer of milk, the pond didn’t work.

Looking for somewhere to go, the water gushed into the Bangs’ home, which is next to the pond. The family claims the county failed to maintain the pond.

The Bangs are suing Spokane County for the loss of their home.

Spokane County is expected to hire a consultant this month to begin the North Side Watershed Study.

The study will take more than a year to finish, but by then should paint a complete picture of North Spokane’s underground hydrology and geology and begin to provide solutions.

The Landau study of area hydrology was completed for the Eaglewood area last fall. It yielded few surprises for residents.

The study noted that the groundwater pool was filled to the brim, and storm drains - intended to let storm water or snow melt-off flow into the ground - couldn’t possibly work. So, water goes where it can: into streets, yards, septics - and basements.

For the moment, the flooding is effecting only a relatively small section of the Eaglewood neighborhood, but it’s expected to spread.

“This isn’t a localized problem,” said St. Godard.

The best solution, according to county engineers, is a complete storm-water system that would cost an estimated $1.5 million. Exactly how the system will be paid for is still under discussion.

Should only the 70 homes in the flood area pay? Or should it be spread out among the 500 or so home owners in Eaglewood? Or should the the entire county chip in?

“We are out for a long-term solution,” said Eaglewood resident Tom Lynch. “I’ve lived here five years and want to live here another 15 to 20. But I don’t want a big tax assessment.”

Lynch and others say it’s the county’s responsibility to find a way of funding the storm-water system.

“You can’t just assess 60 or 70 houses in an affected area,” said St. Godard.

“The county has to radically improve the way it does business,” added Lynch. “We are not an isolated incident here.

Last fall, for the first time in North Spokane, construction of new homes with basements was prohibited on the prairie.

City Hearing Examiner Greg Smith approved Summerhill development on the south side of Strong Road, near Cedar Road, but said the houses had to be built without basements because of flood potential.

The Five Mile Neighborhood Council has called for a moratorium on vested and new developments in both the city and county until the watershed study is complete.

They’ve met with city and county officials, and planning commissioners to discuss a wide range of growing pains on the prairie, including the flooding.

“We’ve had lots of meetings, but no formal follow up,” said Rich Fink, chairman of the Five Mile Neighborhood Council.

Brenda Sims, a county storm-water planner, said a moratorium would be useful in North Spokane until solutions are found.

Possible answers might include a combination of detention ponds and storm sewers. But Sims said solutions don’t necessarily have to be traditional.

In some communities, storm water has been channeled into natural-looking, rigorously maintained “creeks” that meander through neighborhood open space.

Theoretically, developers might be allowed to build at a higher density in exchange for including attractive, workable storm-water solutions in their developments.

In some neighborhoods across the country, the added water element and open space increases home values.

“Runoff can be an amenity to a community,” said Sims.

But right now, in some North Side neighborhoods, it’s a nightmare.

Bob Jorgensen, a Five Mile Prairie resident who has spent $50,000 in the last six years trying to keep water out of the basement of his new Strong Road house, said the flooding goes with the territory; it’s a fact of life.

“It’s part of the charm of living on the prairie,” he said. “You accept it, you deal with it.

But, he added, “It would be nice to go out to a movie and not come home to an indoor swimming pool.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color) Graphic: Five Mile Prairie flooded area