Treading water

By MIKE RICHESON

Bigfork Eagle

On the night of her 94th birthday, Martha Oliver found herself frantically working in her driveway to keep an onslaught of water from flooding her basement.

Oliver, whose house overlooks the bay at the end of Oliver Lane, has owned her piece of property since 1933. Not once in the past 74 years has her land had a problem with flooding.

Michael and Sally Janover live directly north of Oliver, and their property has never flooded, either.

Until this year.

“I haven’t had any problems - ever - until this mess next door and the school changed the parking for the school buses,” Oliver said. “I just can’t imagine the mess that was out there. This winter has been really terrible.”

What Oliver calls “this mess next door” is the Marina Cay expansion project that now looms over her back fence.

Oliver, who has already gone through two lawsuits with Marina Cay - and won - has put up obstructions to keep “the condo visitors from looking in and seeing what I’m having for dinner.”

And Sally Janover said the construction has deteriorated Oliver Lane to the point that she no longer washes her car because it gets dirty just pulling in and out of her driveway.

Both Oliver and Janover contend the recent construction so drastically altered the topography that excess water is funneled directly onto their property.

A couple of weeks ago, when the snow was melting fast, the supervisor for Martel’s construction project for the Marina Cay came running over to Janover’s house and warned her that “acres of water” was pouring onto her property. He believed that the bottom of a supposed storm water runoff basin on Grand Drive in front of her house had either frozen or plugged. Water was backing up and pouring into her yard.

The supervisor told Janover to call the county, and he dispatched three of his men to fix the problem. What they found was a surprise, to say the least.

The catch basin was nothing more than a dry well with an underground outlet that emptied under a large bush. A quick inspection showed the end of a PVC pipe directing water onto Janover’s land.

Water flowed across Janover’s land and toward Oliver’s house. The emergency forced Oliver to try and dig a trench in her driveway to keep water out of her basement. The stream piled up nearly five inches along her fence.

The construction supervisor dug a trench in Janover’s yard to divert water away from her house, and Oliver had a sump pump stuck out in her driveway to pump water over the hill and into the bay.

But for the two homeowners, the nightmare had just begun.

Janover called the Flathead County Roads Department, and spoke with then superintendent Charlie Johnson. He said it wasn’t the county’s problem and passed her to the state. State officials told her that when Highway 35 went in, Grand Drive was turned over to Flathead County.

She again called the county, but they didn’t know what to do and told her to call the city of Kalispell. A city engineer pointed her back to the county.

Round and round she went with nothing to show for her efforts. In fact, she’s still waiting.

“The county has been very unhelpful. Everyone is passing the buck,” Janover said. “I can’t afford to be flooded out. This has to be corrected very soon.”

Although both County Commissioner Joe Brenneman and Roads Department employee Guy Foy have been out to look at the problem, nothing is being done.

Oliver and Janover both hold that the Marina Cay project was the final catalyst of a series of changes made during the past few years.

First, Grand Drive was reconfigured when Marina Cay installed two large sewer lines. Now, Oliver says, the road slopes more toward her land.

Second, when the Bigfork School District redid its section where the buses park to load and unload students, Oliver believes a swale that directed water down Grand was removed.

Still, with these changes, flooding never occurred. But the construction project changed everything. This, according to Janover and Oliver, is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The problem with the catch basin-to-nowhere goes back even farther. When the sidewalk and handrail along Grand Drive was installed in the mid-90s, Flathead County supervised the project and even hired an engineering company out of Kalispell - Thomas, Dean and Hoskins.

According to a CTEP Maintenance Agreement between the state and Flathead County, the county must “service, maintain and pay the cost of operating the community transportation enhancement project described in this agreement.”

Those in Bigfork who were connected to the sidewalk project - the school district and Bigfork Water and Sewer - say that when the county installed the sidewalk, it also installed the catch basin in front of Janover’s house, making the basin part of the maintenance agreement.

But according to Guy Foy, the county has no idea who installed the catch basin, and the county definitely doesn’t know who ran a PVC pipe from the catch basin, under Grand Drive and into a yard.

“We have no idea how long it’s been there or who put that in,” Foy said.

More than that, Foy said the county doesn’t know who installed most of the storm water runoff basins throughout Bigfork.

“We did not install them, and we haven’t maintained them,” he said.

Julie Spencer, district manager for Bigfork Water and Sewer, recalls talking to former County Roads Superintendent Charlie Johnson about the runoff basins the county installed in Bigfork. The problem, Spencer said, is that “nobody has records, and nobody wants to deal with it.”

Foy said that a county attorney reviewed the CTEP Maintenance Agreement, and it only applies to the sidewalk. Since the county denies any knowledge of the catch basin in front of Janover’s house, the county has nothing to do with the problem.

Brenneman and Foy both pointed at Marina Cay as the problem.

“It looks like the swale [along the south side of Grand] was filled in by the contractor for Marina Cay,” Foy said. “At this point, it becomes a civil matter between her [Janover] and the adjacent property.”

Janover describes her situation as a “cautionary tale,” but according to the county the problem of development and water problems is becoming more frequent each year.

“We are an example of two homeowners who are not only inconvenienced, but also threatened with undergoing swamping,” Janover said. “There is no reason individual citizens should have to pay the price of development. People have a right to develop, but when it destroys a community, it’s wrong.”

During one of Janover’s numerous phone calls, an engineer with the city of Kalispell said there was a state law that made interfering with the natural flow of surface water illegal.

Hydrologist experts, state officials and the Department of Environmental Quality all said the law sounded familiar, but none of them could find the actual statute.

“There is a state law, and it is being totally ignored all over,” Janover said. “There will be a lot of innocent people who will be damaged and are helpless. If a lot of development is happening and that law is being violated and no one is aware, many people may be in jeopardy. It’s a very serious issue.”

For Oliver and Janover, what was a “serious issue” two weeks ago is quickly becoming an imminent safety issue.

Oliver said she fears part of her land above the bay may begin to slide downhill. The property behind her house is rock terraced, and the amount of water recently pushed through has caused her deep concern.

Oliver and Janover are still waiting for a solution, and they are both keeping a nervous eye on the skies.

The spring rains have yet to come.