‘We’re still in limbo’: Spokane Valley pond flooding comes close to a solution after public meeting with county

The Timberland Terrace Pond has been flooding the neighborhood it sits in for almost a decade, but all that could be about to change after several neighbors, started bringing the flooding problem to the attention of the developer along with city and county leaders.

Sue Delucci lives directly in front of the pond on Needham Drive at Saltese Road just a couple blocks east of Sullivan Road in the Valley. When the area floods, the water goes under her home.

“I’m just doing this for my neighbors,” said Delucci who lives at a higher elevation than her neighbors. “I feel so sorry for them.”

Delucci started researching and speaking to city and county officials about the pond five months ago. After all her research, she has come to one conclusion: her neighborhood was destined to get stormwater because of the clay on which the homes are built. The soil cannot absorb the water properly, so the area floods.

Every time it rains, the neighborhood prepares for flooding – sandbagging their driveways and checking their basements or garages for damage every half hour.

Delucci set up a public meeting with the developer, Jesse Fox, and Spokane County Engineer Matt Zarecor to discuss the pond problem. Dozens of neighbors showed up to the meeting last Thursday, in the hopes of hearing a clear solution and timeline for executing it. They got a solution, but not a timeline.

During the meeting, Zarecor said that after discussing the pond problem with Fox, they are considering creating a new stormwater catching system near Sullivan Road and Saltese Road by sourcing water from a spring, which usually feeds the Timberland Terrace Pond. According to Delucci, it will not take care of the runoff water that comes from the hills down to the pond, but it will mean less water will be in the pond.

“We’re coming up on 20 years worth of trying to get it to work where it is now, and the thought is, let’s get this somewhere where we know it can go in the ground,” Zarecor said at the meeting. “We’re committed to finding a way to make this pond work.”

After a geotechnical investigation is done, Zarecor said the water from the spring that typically goes to the pond can be relocated.

But the pond at Timberland Terrace is proof that geotechnical investigations do not catch everything. When the pond was designed in 2006, the investigators drilled 30 feet deep and encountered nothing concerning.

“There was no reason, based on the geotechnical investigation that this pond wouldn’t drain,” Zarecor said. “They did not find the clay that you see, because you’re right at that margin … there’s something, maybe under Sue’s house, some geologic barrier that’s keeping the water from going in the ground.”

In other words, Zarecor believes that no one is to blame for the flooding.

“They did a good job on this. You couldn’t have seen this train coming based on the geotech they did,” Zarecor said. “We need to find somewhere where we’re actually in valley soils and we believe, with more confidence, that we’re not going to have a continuing issue (in the Saltese).”

But until a timeline is created, or the Spokane Valley City Council gets involved in solving the pond problem, Delucci remains worried for her neighborhood.

“We’re still sitting out here in limbo at this point,” Delucci said.

Delucci has spoken to the Spokane Valley City Council about the issue several times and is hoping to get the council’s support to push the county into turning the solution into a reality.

The Timberlane Terrace Pond was created in 2007 with 5,950 square feet. By 2014, the area had expanded to 10,757 square feet. In 2015, the pond expanded to an area of 29,885 square feet.

In 2017, the pond overflowed and ran down Timberlane Drive. That summer, after the flooding, the top sediment layer of the pond was removed and a dry well was installed in the northwest corner of the pond to help prevent further flooding, Zarecor said during the meeting. In 2018, the pond expanded to 44,400 square feet and four dry wells were added.

The pond continued flooding the neighborhood, so in 2025 two holes were dug in the pond in an attempt to drain the water down. The water did not drain, Zarecor said.

“The predominant problem we have is just the additional inputs of groundwater,” Zarecor said. “Some of them were from Timberland Terrace and the houses that go in there, they encounter groundwater in the crawlspace or the basement.”

There have never been, nor will there ever be, any plans for the Spokane County government to mitigate flood damage or potential flood damage, Zarecor said. The pond is owned by the Timberland Terrace Homeowners Association, which has been footing the bills for all the work that’s been done to try to prevent flooding. According to Zarecor, there has been no city or Spokane County money involved with any of the work done on the pond.