MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Nearly every winter for many years, water has flooded the road, driveways and yards along 230th Street SW near Lake Ballinger.
A series of four culverts that funneled Halls Creek under the street didn’t have the capacity to carry all the water during storms. The creek would back up and spill onto the street and into driveways and yards.
One of those yards was at the home where Larry Dahlberg grew up. His folks still live in the house.
The water would saturate the lawn and creep into the crawl space under the house, he said.
“Sooner or later the water’s got to go somewhere,” Dahlberg said. The family had a field drain and sump pump installed to keep the water out.
Some of the neighbors have had similar problems. Now it looks like they might get some relief.
The city of Mountlake Terrace has spent $750,000 to remove the road and culverts from the creek and open the stream to daylight.
“This should alleviate some flooding,” said Will VanRy, engineering services director for Mountlake Terrace. “The little section of road that was removed with the culverts was kind of like a dam.”
Dahlberg welcomes the work.
“I’m glad they’re doing it,” he said.
The creek runs southward from Halls Lake in Lynnwood to Lake Ballinger. The road, 230th Street SW, originally extended across the creek to the parking lot at the Ballinger Playfield.
In the 1970s, barricades were installed on the part of the street that crossed the creek, VanRy said, closing it off to auto traffic but leaving it open to pedestrians.
Most of the flooding has occurred at the homes at the end of the cul-de-sac created by the road closure, next to the creek.
As part of the work, crews plan to install a footbridge across Halls Creek.
They’re also taking the opportunity to replace a sewer line that had been sinking in peat beneath the topsoil, VanRy said. The new pipeline will be placed atop piles driven deep into the solid ground below the peat, then covered up.
To remove the section of road and the culverts, crews placed two dams in the creek about 200 feet apart to create a dry work area and pumped the stream through a pipeline, VanRy said. That part of the work took about a month-and-a-half, from mid-August until early October.
Dahlberg said during his teen years, he would get into a boat and paddle around the playfield and Lake Ballinger Golf Course during winter floods. For that reason, he wonders if the work will entirely prevent the street from flooding.
VanRy said the city also is planning to remove culverts at the other end of Lake Ballinger, the southern end, that route McAleer Creek under I-5 toward Lake Washington. It’s hoped this can help flooding around the entire lake.
An open house on the McAleer Creek project is scheduled for 2 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Nile Shrine Center, 6601 244th Street SW.
Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439; sheets@heraldnet.com.
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