Water-filled pit at center of dispute

The nondescript little pond has potential. Now, however, it looks exactly like what it is – a water-filled excavation pit by the side of the road at 12th Avenue and Carnahan Road.

But developer Brian Main sees it turning into an aerated, landscaped pond with a consistent water level, adjacent benches, maybe a fountain and other amenities for the enjoyment of residents of the housing development he plans to build nearby. He’s got his ducks in a row, so to speak, to make it happen, he says.

Wait a minute, says the city of Spokane Valley.

A large number of the homes Main plans to build are located above a 100-year flood plain, and insufficient documentation has been provided to prove the developer’s contention that the flood plain is incorrectly located on the map, according to Marina Sukup, community development director for Spokane Valley. There are strict regulations about building over a flood plain as well as considerations about the effects construction might have on land and dwellings below the plain.

What could be a winning scenario for the little pond is becoming mired in the swamp that develops when developers, municipalities and environmental interests are on different tracks.

Main owns the nearly 17-acre South Terrace parcel of land sloping uphill from Carnahan to Willamette between the yet-to-be-constructed 13th Avenue and approximately Ninth Avenue. It is the final phase of the Woodland Terrace development that saw the construction of some 180 homes just north and south of 14th Avenue, between Carnahan and Havana streets, over the past 10 years.

Main had been a partner in the larger enterprise but is now sole owner/developer of the South Terrace phase, and is set to build 80 single-family homes on 50- by 129-foot lots there. The key community feature would be the little pond.

The pond was created some years back – possibly in the 1930s – when clay was excavated from the site. The resulting pit was a dry hole until the Moran sewer trunk line was installed nearby in the mid-1980s, and surface water was directed into the hole, according to a report by Biology Soil & Water Inc. of Spokane. “Further, according to the report commissioned by Main, the city of Spokane also approved excavation of a ditch to direct surface water into the pit, and the pit was converted to a storm-water detention pond in the mid-1980s “and has been used for that purpose ever since.”

Two years ago Main petitioned the city of Spokane Valley for a threshold determination, a determination of significance for a go ahead for his South Terrace development. A DS can result in a finding of no significant environmental impact, a mitigated determination (no adverse effect provided some mitigating action is taken) or a finding of significant environmental impact. Should the most severe DS attach to a project, a full environmental impact study is mandated before the project can move forward.

Main states the city has been dragging its feet over the DS for the past two years. “I’d like to think that’s because they were unsure what to do about the flood plain issue,” he says. “But we got weary waiting month after month, year after year.”

In March, Main filed in Spokane County Superior Court for an order which would compel the city to produce the DS.

The developer and the city of Spokane Valley came to an agreement that the city would issue a DS by April 20, and the legal action was dismissed. On April 20, the DS found that “this proposal is likely to have a probable significant adverse impact on the environment” and that an environmental impact statement will be required.

Main and any member of the public who wishes to appeal the decision has until Friday to do so; public comments will be accepted until May 11. Main said he will be appealing, and a hearing will likely follow, with the final DS to be determined by a hearing examiner.

Main says he’s looking forward to the hearing, confident that he can prove – and, he believes, already has proven – his case about the flood plain’s true location and the disputed direction of Glenrose Creek, an intermittent stream, the exact location of which is also wrapped up in the ongoing discussions between developer and city.

The most significant part of the conflict is identification of the flood plain’s location, currently sited on the Federal Emergency Management Agency map as coming through the western portion of the South Terrace site and incorporating a portion of the pond.

“How can a portion of a pond be in a flood plain and a portion outside it?” Main asks.

He hired an engineering firm to study the flood plain, and the resulting report indicates that the flood plain veers off to the east of the property. “The FEMA map is wrong,” Main says.

Sukup says the city does not have authority to change a FEMA flood plain map so that Main can develop the property as he would like to. She needs a letter of map revision from FEMA and contends Main had been advised since last summer to provide the proper documentation to FEMA but that he has not done so.

Main says his engineers have provided FEMA with all requested documents, save for one which asks for hydraulic analyses tying in to the flood plain both upstream and downstream. There is no downstream tie in, Main asserts. “We can’t tie it downstream to a map that is wrong,” adds Erick Fitzpatrick of Storhaug Engineering of Spokane.

But what happens to the little pond as the developer and city of Spokane Valley wrestle over the surrounding housing development? The determination of significance is not about the pond directly, but it does affect the pond’s future, too.

Main had proposed tapping into additional uphill storm water runoff from 15th Avenue and Chronicle to keep the pond fully filled year-round, but the city has said no, citing the need for onsite storm water drainage planning and the concern about keeping properties located below the site reasonably safe from flooding. Main says an evaporation pond is already on site and that storm-water drainage issues have been dealt with and required documentation filed with the city.

And so it goes.

Meantime, the pond, the byproduct of excavation decades ago, awaits decisions. There it sits, rough and ragged looking, attractive to passing waterfowl but not much else.