Homeowners' flood defense plan halted

It was a homeowner’s nightmare — water creeping underneath the front door, furniture, books and electronics soaked as water levels slowly rise. Carefully tended gardens were washed away in a wave.

In March residents along Snee-Oosh Beach suffered thousands of dollars in damages as an unexpected tidal surge washed across Chilberg Road near Hope Island and swamped their homes.

In advance of “King Tide” season coming again in a few months, five neighbors on McGlinn road pooled their money to build a low garden wall across their back yards along Chilberg Road, hoping to help protect their homes from seawater flooding in the future.

Last week, the Swinomish Department of Environmental Protection issued a “stop work” order to the contractor in the midst of construction.

By then, the wall was about 35 percent done, homeowner Ted Nasi said. All the neighbors had already paid to get the job started.

The contractor immediately stopped working, leaving some of the homeowners wondering about the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s authority to halt construction on their privately owned, or “fee simple,” land.

While the neighborhood sits within the boundaries of the Swinomish Reservation, the property is not held in trust by the federal government and is taxed by the county and state. However, the tribe has a planning department in charge of issuing building permits on the reservation, including on “fee simple” property.

According to Tribe General Manager Allan Olson, since the wall is within 200 feet of the shoreline, the tribe requires a permit under its Shoreline and Sensitive Areas ordinance.

“What I’d like to see is the wall finished,” said homeowner Nasi, who has lived there for 19 years. He is still repairing his house eight months — and $100,000 — after the flood. He believes the 2-foot-high wall could have prevented the extensive damage to his house if it had been there before March’s flood.

“Is this the way I want my land to be when I die or move?” he said. “No! It’s all torn up. It looks worse than before,” with the wall project incomplete.

Nasi said he spent months removing driftwood, transferring personal belongings and repairing his property. He even had to remove a “180-pound railroad tie” that had washed into his yard in the flood.

While some of the homeowners call the structure they want along the back of their property a “garden wall,” the Swinomish Tribe considers it a “flood wall.”

The unfinished 2-foot-high wall made of white decorative concrete blocks involved light trenching to provide space to contain another foot underground. Homeowners had contacted the Skagit County Planning and Development Services Department and had the understanding that no county permit was necessary for a “garden wall.”

Had a county permit been required, the tribe would have immediately been notified of the project under an agreement between the tribe and county. Olson said the homeowners had not contacted the tribe, so Swinomish officials were unaware there was a shallow excavation going on near the shore, which requires a tribal permit.

According to Olson, the digging exposed “shell midden with visible fragments of pottery, shells and animal bones in the spoil piles next to the ditch.” The items in the exposed earth are being examined by the tribe’s Historical Preservation Officer and staff archaeologist.

“Just because it’s private land doesn’t mean you don’t have to get a permit to do anything,” Olson said. “They should have included us.”

For now, the wall, which would have been 250 to 300 feet long, remains untouched.

One property owner, who did not want to be named, said that she had not been told that they needed to contact the tribe.

“We did everything right through the county; we thought we were in the clear,” she said.

The homeowners were not trying to blindside the tribe, she said.

Meanwhile, the tribe is working to resolve the problem, Olson said. “Flooding has become an increasing problem in the Snee-Oosh Beach Community,” he wrote. “The tribe is committed to working with the county and affected landowners to find an appropriate solution.”