Not Everyone On Island Gives A Dam Harbor Island Residents Worry About Incomplete Retaining Wall

A hole in one is a hole for all.

That’s what some residents of Harbor Island fear.

During last year’s flooding, residents, volunteers and some elected officials worked through the night to place 135,000 sandbags around the Spokane River island.

Since then, most residents of the island’s 24 waterfront homes have spent thousands of dollars building 3-foot concrete retaining walls so that effort will never have to be repeated.

Some homeowners, however, have left their sandbags in place. A couple of others took down the sandbags, but haven’t built up an alternative water break.

That has neighbors fear rising water would make their own effort - and expense - worthless.

“Some people are being uncooperative and it’s frustrating,” said resident Jackie Bradley. “It’s scary.”

Bill Schwartz, the county’s disaster coordinator, plans to walk the properties Friday to inspect the danger. But, he said, if even one house hasn’t built a retaining wall “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize we’ve got a problem.”

The island is so shallow, that water from one yard could flood most of the island. Water during the 1996 floods was kept at bay by sandbags, but rose high enough to bury streets in a foot of water.

Commissioner Ron Rankin estimated the county spent nearly $78,000 during the floods to keep island homes dry.

In fact, commissioners considered creating a local improvement district and charging residents to build an islandwide retaining wall.

But residents like Gordon Anderson, president of the Harbor Island Homeowners Association, said legal costs alone could add $50,000 to the cost of an LID. His neighbors, he said, preferred to do the work themselves.

Most of them did.

Anderson, the Bradleys and homeowner Dan Flanagan spent $4,000 building red brick walls that they mask as flower beds. About 17 others followed suit.

“I felt it was the right thing to do,” Flanagan said.

But some neighbors are absentee owners who rent their property. A few are older residents, who either can’t afford the construction or considered the 1996 floods a fluke, Anderson said.

That’s not good enough for some other homeowners.

“It very well could have been a fluke,” Flanagan said. “But if your house is washing down the river on a fluke, it’s still washing down the river.”

Neighbor Joe McGinn, whose retaining wall is under construction, is more philosophical.

“It’s always a difficult issue to expect somebody else to pay to protect your property,” he said. “When it becomes a question of how what you do affects your neighbors … that’s a difficult question.”

And Anderson, who is trying to appease some neighbors, points out that most of the island complied.

“When you look at it, we’re really far along,” he said.

He also feels for his neighbors who haven’t.

“So we have to sandbag one or two houses,” he said. “That’s not so bad.”

But commissioners, at worst, may try to hold the residents who haven’t built retaining walls liable for any damage flooding may cause their neighbors.

At best, Rankin said, they might build the walls themselves and bill the residents.

“It’s just not a good neighbor policy,” he said.

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