OLYMPIA – Snohomish County residents whose low-lying homes are threatened by area rivers have snared the attention of state and federal lawmakers.
Rep. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe and Rep. Dan Kristiansen, R-Snohomish, have introduced a bill that would give their rural 39th District’s counties, including Snohomish County, more authority to protect imperiled riverfront homes.
State and federal laws to protect threatened salmon make it difficult for homeowners to bulk up their shorelines. Typical methods, such as riprapping with boulders, are frowned upon by biologists as harmful to salmon habitat.
The bill would create a “flood control and stream restoration pilot program” in select rural watersheds from Snohomish County north to Canada.
In those areas, the bill would require the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to delegate its authority to approve emergency streamside projects to the counties.
“The reason I put together the bill … is basically because my district’s been hammered in the last few years,” Pearson said.
Record flooding in 2003 washed away some homes in Granite Falls and Darrington and left others dangling on the edge.
“I’ve been to countless meetings and heard the most horrible stories of … homes going down the river, propane tanks, septic tanks,” Pearson said. “We need new river policy.”
Biologists and environmentalists disagree.
At a packed hearing Feb. 11 about the bill before the House Natural Resources, Ecology and Parks Committee in Olympia, Heath Packard of Audubon Washington and Greg Hueckel, assistant director of the habitat programs for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, expressed concern.
Each feared the bill would use the pretext of emergencies to circumvent the state’s authority to protect fish habitat.
On Tuesday U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., will tour several homes near Darrington on the edge of the Sauk River. Many of the people he will meet squeezed into the hearing in Olympia.
They shared stories of how the Sauk and Skagit rivers ate away at their property while they awaited approval to act in defense of their land.
“We’ve run into a nightmare of permitting problems,” said Lori Kratzer, president of the River Resource Trust of Arlington, a nonprofit agency that includes an estimated 100 area landowners.
Jim Faucett said that over the years the Sauk River has eaten up 40 acres of timber land on his 80-acre ranch located three miles north of Darrington. “If we let it keep doing its own thing, it’s going to take the whole valley,” he said.
Virgie Eldridge of Concrete in Skagit County summed up many residents’ frustrations.
“I feel like we’re awake in a nightmare with one arm knocking on doors for help and one arm trying to hold the river back,” she said.
The bill’s prospects are unclear. It would first need to pass a vote in the House’s natural resources committee. Rep. Brian Sullivan, D-Mukilteo, is the committee’s chairman but was unavailable for comment Friday.
Pearson said he hoped Sullivan would give the committee a chance to vote on it.
Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.
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