Neighbors Taken Aback By Drain Cleanup

They’d expected Bobcats, ATVs and small tractors.

So, when the heavy equipment rolled in last week to clean out Liberty Lake’s clogged drain channel, neighbors were taken aback.

The people who helped haul the fallen trees and branches out of the channel by hand last year suddenly found backhoes and dumptrucks big enough to build roads just outside their back yards.

“They cut down some of the real large cottonwood trees,” said Tom Balmes, vice president of the Liberty Lake Village Homeowners Association.

Balmes and 35 families in the association own the land the drain channel runs through. It’s a wetlands in the spring, but as the ground dries in the summer it becomes a quiet greenbelt where people walk, watch birds and kids ride their bikes, he said.

The homeowners have met with the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District for the past two years or more to talk about cleaning the lake’s drain.

They know that high water levels wash phosphorus and nitrogen out of the marsh and into the lake, making it more susceptible to ugly algae blooms.

“We do all care about the quality of the lake, that’s why we live out here,” Balmes said.

Still, they didn’t imagine it would take such huge equipment or that so many trees would be cut down.

Lee Mellish, director of the sewer and water district, said his phone started ringing when the work on the channel began last week. The biggest concern, he said, was that the trees were cut down.

He said the district worked for two years to get the permits to clean the channel, and tried to keep the neighbors informed throughout the process.

“I don’t think anyone had given a lot of thought to what was going to happen,” he said.

The drain channel, which is actually an old irrigation ditch, had not been maintained for more than 20 years. Trees were growing in the middle of the drain channel.

Mellish said the district had to strike a delicate balance. They didn’t want to cut the trees, but cleaning the channel is one of the keys to the health of Liberty Lake.

“I think we’re doing the best we can,” Mellish said. “There are just some huge trees in there that we’ve had to dodge around but some of them had to come down because they were right in the middle of the channel.”

The tractors removed asphalt, concrete chunks, fallen trees and other debris clogging the ditch. Also, crews scraped away silt that had accumulated in the channel over the years - up to three feet deep in some areas.

The water district has an easement for the channel through the middle of the land owned by the Liberty Lake Village homeowners. Although the easement is 75 feet wide, Mellish said they were able to confine the work to about 35 feet.

Now, he wishes they would have called the homeowners to let them know the work was about to start.

“In retrospect, that might have made a real difference,” he said.

The neighbors and district officials met this week to talk over the concerns about the work.

Balmes said they learned the scope of the project changed after the district found out the drain channel wasn’t considered a wetlands area. Because it is man-made, state and federal laws that protect the wetlands didn’t apply.

They also clarified plans to plant trees and grass to revegetate the banks of the channel. Mellish said the sewer and water district will hire a landscape architect to plant new foliage in the area.

And they agreed the lake’s health is the most important issue.

“We are on the same page and there was just an initial shock,” Balmes said.

The homeowners are still concerned about some large cottonwood trees left on the banks of the channel. He said they fear they could be undercut by the water and later fall.

Mellish said the district will maintain the lake’s drain now so it will never have to do the same kind of cleanup again.