Kalispell government tackles drainage problems

By JOHN STANG

The Daily Inter Lake

The Kalispell government expects to boost inspection requirements before a newly built house can be occupied - including bolstering drainage standards.

The City Council discussed stricter rules Monday, telling its staff to return on an undetermined date with some tweaked proposed regulations.

The biggest issue was Kalispell's significant stormwater drainage problems, especially with new construction.

Drainage regulations have not been strictly enforced. Actual drainage in a new subdivision frequently does not reflect the plans that the city approved prior to construction. Newer houses in a neighborhood often are built on higher ground than the area's first houses -funneling water runoff into the older homes.

Crawl spaces and basements flood routinely turn up in Kalispell.

"After listening to horror stories of people faced with high groundwater situations … I can't sit here and let people buy property in situations like that. … We owe it to the community to build it right," said council member Hank Olson.

The city's staff has recommended:

. Stricter enforcement of existing building and drainage regulations

. That the drainage situations be nailed down with historical data during the preliminary-plat stage - when the initial conditions for planning a subdivision are set up. The staff also recommends that basements be prohibited when the water table is less than 10 feet below the surface, and crawl spaces be prohibited when the water table is 5 feet or less below the surface.

. Adding city inspections of foundation drains and damp-proofing of basement walls during construction.

. Installing stricter rules and enforcement to ensure that a subdivision's drainage system will work as intended. n Telling the Public Works Department not to issue a water meter for a building until the Building Department issues a final certificate of occupancy. This is part of a city-staff-wide effort to improve building inspections prior to issuing these certificates.

A few builders showed up at Monday's meeting and asked to participate in discussions about the proposed new rules. They also said that Kalispell's water-table depths often rise or fall according to the weather, creating fuzziness in determining the 5-foot and 10-foot cutoff depths for crawl spaces and basements.

Council member Bob Hafferman said legal pitfalls lurk in the city making a blanket declaration that it is safe to build a crawl spaces and basements if the water table is at a certain depth below the ground. He agreed that water-table depths can change because of the weather, and that determining a precise groundwater depth is tricky.

"This should be used as an aid to an owner, not as a guarantee. … I think we should not give assurances. We should give information," Hafferman said.

Council members told the city staff to brainstorm how to warn people about potential flooding, without leaving the city legally liable if a basement or crawl space floods despite calculations on a water table's depth.

Council member Tim Kluesner said: "I want homeowners and home buyers to be essentially forewarned."