Index homes threatened by river erosion

Published 9:25 pm Sunday, June 28, 2009

INDEX — The river’s roar is getting louder.

Some homeowners worry that the North Fork Skykomish River could wash them away by fall or winter.

Because the water isn’t threatening any public buildings or roads, they’ve been having a hard time getting government help. They don’t have enough money to do expensive work themselves.

“If something isn’t done to the bank now, it’s all going to go,” said Arlene McDonald, one of the homeowners.

McDonald and her husband, Donald, both 73, moved to their house in 1988 when he retired from his job as a custodian with the Seattle School District. They left their home in north Seattle for the woods outside of Index, where they could spend more time camping, hunting and fishing.

At the time, the river seemed a safe distance away. It stayed that way for years.

That changed with flooding in 2006 that eroded the ground beneath a neighbor’s house and carried it downstream.

Around the same time, the fast-flowing waters suddenly jumped to the other side of a cluster of trees — the side closer to the McDonalds.

Until then, a strip of land 80 yards or more wide, had separated their house from the river. Donald McDonald planted the area with grass. In photographs from 2005, it looks almost parklike.

Now, the land is washed away to points unknown.

“Little did we know the river would do this,” Arlene McDonald said. “If that would’ve been on my mind, we would’ve never bought.”

They have a small yard left, but one of their neighbors has run out of ground. Mary Lindenberger’s house sits right on the river’s bank.

There used to be a gazebo and land between the water and the home studio where her husband, retired dentist Manfred Lindenberger, painted.

“He just loved it out here,” she said. “He loved to fish and go outdoors and paint.”

Now, the bank drops off sharply a mere foot from the foundation.

The clear green water rushes below.

“When the river’s up and running, you can hear the rocks,” Donald McDonald said. “You hear the rocks moving, crashing.”

The river’s movement may be surprising to some, but not to experts who make a living studying such things.

Sue Perkins, a river geologist who runs a Seattle-based consulting business, said that rivers migrate across the flood plane, either by jumping a channel, or by carving out a bend.

“They move back and forth, back and forth, back and forth,” she said.

One thing to look for is gravel in the bank. That’s a sign that the river used to flow through there and deposited the rocks.

Armoring the banks to prevent further erosion doesn’t always work, Perkins said, especially on a powerful river.

“That’s a really high- energy river so it’s pretty tough to armor the banks successfully,” she said.

Few counties would pay for such work, she said, unless a public road or some other resource is threatened. Authorities need to weigh the effect on habitat, too.

The McDonalds and Lindenberger say that without help, the river could wipe out 13 lots and five houses. Six owners would be affected.

Since January, they have had several federal and county officials visit the property. They haven’t had much luck getting help.

A glimmer of hope came recently, when they heard about some homeowners along the Sauk River south of Darrington. That group got help from Snohomish County to speed up the permitting process, but they were able to pay for the work themselves.

That’s something the McDonalds say they can’t afford. An engineer estimated it might cost $1.2 million to shore up the bank.

Snohomish County Public Works Director Steve Thomsen said the best chance for financial help would probably be the U.S. Natural Resource Conservation Service’s emergency watershed program. That’s not a sure bet, because it requires that 25 percent of the money come from a local sponsor, either a government or private interests.

County officials say the expense would be difficult to justify to other taxpayers.

“A small community like that without a piece of public infrastructure is going to have a hard time finding a public grant before next year’s flood,” Thomsen said.

Ongoing maintenance could be a problem, too. Like the geologist, Thomsen said the river is a powerful force.

“It packs more punch, more energy for its size than just about any other river we have in Snohomish County,” he said. “You can invest hundreds of thousands of dollars and the next high water could (cause) significant damage.”

County Councilman Dave Somers, whose district includes Index, couldn’t offer any short-term solutions. He said it was mistake to build homes in those areas, but the mistake happened years ago.

“I am sympathetic because I don’t like to see somebody lose their home and their investment,” Somers said. “On the other hand, I don’t think it’s really right for taxpayers to have to foot the bill either.”

He would like the county to make information readily available to homeowners so they may better understand the chances that a river could change course in their direction.

For now, the homeowners on the North Fork Skykomish River are stuck searching for a way to save their property from the raging waters. Throughout the county, many others are in a similar situation.

Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465 or nhaglund@heraldnet.com.