Hope floats, but problems persist
City still looking for a permanent solution to flooding in southern Kalispell
The city of Kalispell has begun to bail some homeowners out of their flooding problems, but it still has a long way to go to finding a permanent solution.
The Kalispell City Council listened to its staff Monday tell how the city government will help several homeowners and what measures are in the works to prevent flooding in future subdivisions.
About 20 southern Kalispell residents - mostly from the Santa Fe-Phoenix-Bismark-Denver streets area - listened as well.
Because Monday's meeting was a workshop session, the council could not make decisions other than provide some guidance. The council did not object to its staff's proposed solutions.
The yards, basements and crawl spaces of many southern Kalispell homes have been plagued with routine flooding, which has caused thousands of dollars in damages to houses.
Causes of the flooding include the water table being a few feet from the ground's surface, heavier-than-typical winter rains, construction changing drainage flows approved in the original subdivision plans, several years of drought providing a false picture to developers of how wet areas can get, and city inspectors unable to keep up with Kalispell's housing boom.
"All the houses are flooded in my neighborhood because of poor planning," said Rachel Martin of southwestern Kalispell.
Affected homeowners are frustrated by the slow responses of developers, engineers and government agencies. Some homeowners have had flooding problems for years. Others had flooding increase drastically with this past winter's heavy rains.
"We frustrated by the lack of getting anything done in an appropriate time. … I sure hope you do something soon," Bruce Schulmer of southwestern Kalispell told the council.
The city's staff proposed three ways to avoid flooding problems in future subdivisions and proposed quick solutions for a couple of immediate flooding problems.
Tom Jentz, city planning director, said the long-range proposals are:
. Having developers turn in groundwater information when they send their preliminary plans to the city Planning Department. If the groundwater is too close to the surface, the city could forbid basements and crawl spaces in those houses.
. Having the city begin stricter inspections of drainage measures around a new house's foundation.
. Having the city begin more rigorous inspections of new houses, including ensuring that builders keep to the original drainage plans. If a house fails drainage-related inspections, the city would deny it a certificate of occupancy.
The council told Jentz to expand and fine-tune those ideas into formal recommendations.
Meanwhile, the city is tackling its two highest-profile flooding problems.
One is Judy Perry's crawl space and yard at 144 Beargrass Lane, which has not been resolved in the 10 months that the city and developer have been aware of it. The other is the Phoenix-Santa Fe streets area, whose residents swarmed the April 10 council meeting to complain about major flooding there.
The two developers involved - Owl Corp. for the Santa Fe-Phoenix area and Leisure Heights for Perry's neighborhood - have bond money posted with the city, said City Manager Jim Patrick. That means they must fix the problems or forfeit the bond money if the city fixes them.
Meanwhile, the city is pumping some outdoors floodwater into its stormwater sewers to help those homeowners.
The engineer for the Santa Fe-Phoenix area - WMW Engineering of Whitefish - has until late today to come up with a flooding solution for that region, or the city will begin its own remedial work Thursday at the developer's expense.
WMW Engineering wants to fix the problem and has scheduled a meeting today with city staff, said Jim Hansz, public works director.
If the city does the fix-it work, it will install pipes in the area's infiltration trenches that will suck in water to lower the water table - routing the water to the city's stormwater sewers.
City officials said the Santa Fe-Phoenix area's flooding should be fixed within three weeks.
But Hansz warned that the Santa-Fe-Phoenix solution would not necessarily work everywhere in Kalispell.
"There is not a silver-bullet solution for everything," Hansz said.
Perry's flooding comes from a 1 1/2-year-old, 130,000-gallon water retention basin built on a mound about six feet from her yard. Today, that basin would not be allowed there because it is too close where children play, Hansz said.
The city proposes to have a berm built between the basin and Perry's yard, cut an outlet in the basin's side to draw water into a ditch along Willow Glen Drive, and send the water south through that ditch.
The hurdle is that the ditch is owned by the Montana Department of Transportation. Because water in the ditch could damage Willow Glen Drive, the state wants Kalispell to assume legal responsibility for potential water damage to the road, Patrick said. The city plans to review that liability situation with its attorney this week.
The X-factor in this approach is that Kalispell has no idea how long it will take the state Transportation Department to approve the city's plan.
Mayor Pam Kennedy said that if the Transportation Department stalls on approving the plan, she would call the department's director, Jim Lynch, to push it through. Kennedy used to work for Lynch.
Council member Tim Kluesner wondered about the proposed berm's effectiveness. The council did not know Monday whether the retention basin's bottom is higher than Perry's yard. If it is, that would help nullify the berm's effectiveness, because the basin's water would sink naturally down through the ground to the level of her yard.
Schwarz Architecture and Engineering is the engineer for the basin.
The City Council and staff did not address other two areas with confirmed flooding that had residents show up at Monday's meeting. Those areas are South Meadows Drive in southwestern Kalispell, and Buttercup Loop and southern Beargrass Lane in the southeastern part of the city.