South Hill housing development approved

South Hill neighbors are vowing to fight county approval of a controversial housing development on Spokane’s eastern-most edge.

Southridge Development, a project with 161 houses and 99 apartments just east of Havana Street, won county approval Tuesday. The project, at the southeast corner of 29th Avenue and Havana, is being proposed by Cliff Cameron and Lanzce Douglas, neither of whom responded to interview requests Wednesday.

Neighbors say standing water and ecology issues make the area un-buildable.

There was a spool of strings attached to the county’s approval, everything from required studies on flash floods to a search for fairy shrimp, an endangered species suspected of living in wetlands on the project’s 52.3 acres. Those caveats, imposed by Hearing Examiner Michael Dempsey, didn’t go far enough, according a neighborhood group opposed to the project.

“I am extremely disillusioned with our county government,” said Linde Hackett, a Southridge opponent and member of Citizens for Responsible Development. “How can anything that has to have so many conditions attached to it even be considered for approval?”

Many of the conditions required for Southridge’s approval stem directly from concerns raised by neighbors during a seven-hour-plus hearing about the project Dec. 2. Residents who testified said they worried about several very large wetlands on the Southridge property, potential well contamination, as well as traffic and a little-used stretch of Havana Street that will become part of the road to Southridge. Just south of 29th Avenue, the portion of Havana frequently floods over in the spring and summer.

At the Dec. 2 hearing, Cameron said managing surface water was part of “a normal day of business,” for developers. Not normal, however is the amount of supplemental studies Dempsey has requested concerning wells, floods, endangered species and traffic.

Standing water is a sizable issue in the area where Southridge is proposed because of a thick layer of basalt and other impenetrable soils that prevent water from draining into the ground

Tina Flint, who lives north of Southridge, told Dempsey there are times when she has to use a bucket for a toilet because ground water floods her septic tank.

Dempsey ordered Cameron and Douglass to further study the effects Southridge runoff has on neighbors. The examiner also ruled that Havana should be widened and drained as a condition of Southridge’s development.