Controversial Eastview Village development flooded Greenleaf neighborhood

SNOHOMISH — Mike Putt was flying back from a vacation in Montana when he got a text on Oct. 12 from his neighbor saying their street was flooding. The first real rains of fall had hit the area that weekend, but the muddy water cascading down 79th Avenue was unprecedented to the residents, some of whom had lived there for decades.

The water came from under a chain link fence at the top of the gently sloped residential street, the divider between the Greenleaf HOA neighborhood and Pacific Ridge Homes’ 144-acre development site for a project named Eastview Village.

Pacific Ridge, owned by the country’s largest homebuilding company, D.R. Horton, plans to build 1,311 residential units — a mix of houses and apartments — plus 61,000 square feet of commercial space on the property.

“Everybody from D.R. Horton and the county has been out here, but nobody will tell us what’s the plan to stabilize all this and to make sure this just doesn’t turn into a repeat,” Putt said on Oct. 16, standing in his driveway while looking up at the Eastview Village site.

The county’s Planning and Development Services Department sent the project to Peter Camp, hearing examiner at the time, in November 2024 for approval. After a series of appeals from Greenleaf HOA, community members and the former traffic engineer on the project claiming D.R. Horton and the county weren’t complying with multiple state and county laws, the plans were approved in July.

Multiple residents from the Greenleaf HOA and surrounding neighborhoods reached out to The Daily Herald, sending photographs of the flooding damage and forwarding communications from D.R. Horton. Already dubious about the development, residents are concerned about how the rest of the rainy season will unfold, emails said.

When construction started in August, the previously forested area quickly transformed into a large lot of exposed dirt, drone photos taken by residents show.

And when it started raining, dirt turned to mud, and gravity carried the silty mixture downhill, clogging the drains on 79th Avenue, flooding the street and covering the backyards of multiple houses with an inch of gunk.

Greenleaf residents claim the site wasn’t in compliance with the county’s drainage manual, which states for construction sites that “No soils shall remain exposed and unworked for more than seven days during the dry season, May 1 through September 30, or two days during the wet season, October 1 through April 30. The department shall condition permits to require that soils be stabilized at the end of the work week, if needed, when weather conditions or forecasts indicate that precipitation is likely.”

John Mirante, division vice president of land development for Pacific Ridge and builder director for the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties, said the company declined to comment.

“County staff took swift action to assess the situation and ensure the contractors/owner protected public and private property, which included mandating that the clean-up efforts occurred quickly, having the Contractor meet with affected property owners, and working with the owner to identify the point of failure and ensure multiple mechanisms are in place to avoid recurrence of future incidents,” a statement from Snohomish County Planning and Development Services staff said on Friday.

Since the flooding, county staff have met with Pacific Ridge Homes, verified that the company self-reported the incident to the Washington Department of Ecology and sent a county drainage engineer out to the site on Oct. 17, the statement added.

A county inspector also issued a correction order to the owner and contractor.

On Oct. 13, a resident living near the site filed a complaint with the Washington Department of Ecology.

Since receiving the complaint, the department has visited the site multiple times, Communications Manager Scarlet Tang said in an email on Thursday.

“Since there is rain in the forecast, our immediate focus is ensuring there are appropriate measures in place to prevent further polluted discharges,” she said, including making sure the site constructs a sedimentation pond and stormwater vault to expand its capacity to capture stormwater.

The state agency is also beginning to investigate whether D.R. Horton is overall complying with its construction stormwater permit, which involves “determining whether they’re following their stormwater pollution prevention plan, whether the plan and their best management practices are adequate for what we’re seeing on the ground, and whether polluted stormwater discharged on Oct. 12 might have affected local waterbodies,” Tang said.

Since the incident, D.R. Horton has excavated a new retention pond at the top of 79th and covered the newly formed dam with plastic sheeting and sandbags, Putt said in an email on Oct. 23. The company also hired crews to clean up the inch-thick layer of dirt caking backyards and walkways.

Putt said Mirante’s been responsive since the flooding incident, but high winds on Oct. 19 brought down a tree in his and his wife’s front yard that had previously been protected by the forested area surrounding the home. The tree was the second that the couple had lost since construction started.

“Our current concerns are a large maple tree on the front corner of my property. Given the changed wind patterns, it’s now completely exposed and at serious risk of falling — likely onto our neighbor’s home if it goes down,” Putt said in an email. “We’re very upset at the possibility of having to remove a healthy tree that’s been part of our property for 22 years!”

Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.

Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.