City made flooding to the south worse

I want to thank Snohomish County Councilman John Koster for all of his great efforts, compassion, hard work and unyielding determination in assisting those in his district who are “flood victims” of the city of Stanwood.

We live south of Stanwood in the beautiful agricultural land, but our scenic area has been decimated by the city, which has repeatedly refused to correct intentionally blocked drainage measures it put there to selfishly protect only the city.

The city built a dam across the floodway, built a wall under Highway 532 before a flood, further backing floodwaters upstream, filled in a secondary channel at the confluence of the river where floodwaters used to ragingly discharge into the river and double dammed floodwaters with its pump station. Now floodwaters bottleneck upstream and we are surrounded by “The Lake of Stanwood” after a flood.

Before the city took these measures to protect itself, floodwaters flowed through the floodplain at record speed and quickly discharged within 12-18 hours and were generally 1-2 feet high. In the 2009 flood they were 4-6 feet high! I had 5 feet of floodwater in my crawl space! Homes that never flooded did so this time. The law allows the city to protect itself, but not at the expense of its upstream neighbors.

The city continues to thumb its nose at us and has done nothing to correct the terrible wrongs it has perpetrated upon us. It’s time for the city to belly up to the bar as the Army Corps did in regard to the poor victims in Pacific. Councilman Koster has been working diligently to help us get relief from the elongated, expensive, bureaucratic permitting processes involved in addressing our flood damaged homes! He has been working with county staff and council members on our behalf.

Virginia Schloredt

Neighborhood Coaltion for Flood Relief

Stanwood