Three Rivers Mobile Park’s owner challenges county’s order that residents must leave

Published 11:05 pm Sunday, July 12, 2009

MONROE — People might get to stay a bit longer at a flood-prone mobile home park near the Snohomish River, despite earlier orders to leave this summer.

Last month, Snohomish County inspectors said most of the 100 people at Three Rivers Mobile Park would have to leave by Aug. 31 because their homes are at risk for flooding.

Now the owner is appealing the county’s decision in an attempt to give his tenants a permanent place to live at the park.

“No one’s going anywhere,” owner Bob Carey said.

At the same time, county and federal officials agree that park residents need more time to find a new place to live.

A hearing examiner is expected to rule on Carey’s appeal in late August or September.

“We’re in a holding pattern until the hearing happens,” said Mike McCrary, the county’s inspection and enforcement manager.

The park is at 13201 Elliott Road, near the Snohomish River. In January, floodwaters seeped into many homes there. That was at least the fourth time there has been serious flooding at the park since 1990.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency considers the area a floodway, the most dangerous part of the flood plain.

In March, FEMA told the county that if it didn’t enforce its own floodway rules at Three Rivers, everybody in the county could lose coverage under the National Flood Insurance Program. Not acting could have meant losing 1,892 policies and almost $366 million in coverage. The county had to adopt the rules to participate in the federal program.

Violations included homes where flood damage totaled more than half of the home’s value — not much, when some are worth as little as $5,000. Other problems that inspectors cited were broken-down cars, appliances outside the homes and unlicensed or broken-down recreational vehicles.

The violations applied to about 80 percent of the 68 lots at Three Rivers, McCrary said.

In most cases, fixing the problem meant leaving the park for good; damaged mobile homes can’t be replaced with newer ones. Road-ready RVs, however, could return, if they stayed away half of the year.

“We perceive this as an attempt to shut this park down and move everybody out of there,” said Doug Purcell, a Lynnwood attorney representing the park’s owner. “What they would have left of this community would be so nominal that it would not be able to survive either as a community or as a commercial venture.”

The park has been there since the 1960s, Purcell said, and should be allowed to stay. He viewed the recent code enforcement as “a heavy-handed attempt to make these people move.”

The county has said it is working on plans to help people relocate. Many can’t afford to leave and have homes that are too old to move to other parks. Several people said moving into an apartment isn’t an option because they have pets.

The county imposed the move-out deadline, but they don’t feel entirely free to change it either, McCrary said, because they must show FEMA they’re taking the violations seriously.

“We’re just trying to demonstrate that we’re trying to move ahead as quickly as possible,” he said.

FEMA officials said they don’t expect the park to empty out right away, but they still want to see a solid plan from the county.

“We recognize that implementing that plan will take several months, perhaps a year,” said Mark Riebau, a regional floodplain and insurance branch chief with FEMA.

Claims on federal flood polices at Three Rivers — six in all — totaled $99,106 this year, Riebau said. That’s small compared with the more than $2.8 million that the policies paid out countywide. But those figures only tell part of the story.

Since 2003, FEMA has given out more than $400,000 in assistance to people affected by floods at Three Rivers, he said. The total assessed value for all of the structures there is about $150,000.

Many residents have said that FEMA representatives all but forced them to take money after the recent flooding, even though they didn’t want it.

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