KING COUNTY, Wash. — It has been nearly a year since historic flooding inundated farms, homes, and SR 167 between Kent and Auburn.
Residents in unincorporated King County are still rebuilding and questioning whether enough has been done to prevent it from happening again.
Last December, floodwaters swept across farmland near the Green River, forcing some residents to evacuate themselves, animals and leaving behind there homes in the rising waters.
Don Kramer and his wife’s business and property are still recovering.
“We’re still not where we want to be all the way, but we’re a lot better than we were,” he said.
Don estimates the flooding caused roughly $100,000 in damage.
“I’m getting nervous as December gets closer,” he said.
When water began rising last winter, Don told KIRO 7 his family scrambled to move their animals to higher ground.
“We started having to make decisions on, ‘Oh, the pigs are shorter, so we got to get them out now because they’re going to drown,’ and pick the shortest animals first,” he said.
Don said his property had never flooded like that before. He pointed to longtime plants around the home that were killed by the flood as another indication of just how unusual the event was.
The farms sit in unincorporated King County between Kent and Auburn, near land controlled by multiple government and private entities, including Union Pacific railroad property.
Kent shut off pump as floodwaters rose
Records reviewed by KIRO 7 show the flooding came as the Howard Hanson Dam reached record-high reservoir levels and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released water downstream.
The Green River spilled out of its banks near South 262nd Street. Water inundated farmland to the south, industrial property, and SR 167 to the west.
As floodwaters rose, the City of Kent made the decision to shut down a pump near SR 167 to protect the equipment from being damaged.
Kent acknowledges shutting down the pump allowed SR 167 to flood. However, the city says crews brought in several temporary pumps to remove water from the highway and surrounding valley. According to the city, those pumps collectively moved more water than the pump that had been shut down.
Records reviewed by KIRO 7 show operating those pumps cost tens of thousands of dollars. Kent is seeking reimbursement from FEMA for those expenses.
The city maintains the pump does not serve Don’s side of a berm carrying Union Pacific railroad tracks and says shutting it down did not cause the flooding on his property.
Don isn’t convinced. After the flood, Don began tracing where water around his property drains.
“I was just trying to figure out why my property was not draining off, so I just followed where the water goes,” he said.
That search led him to a drainage pipe that he believes connects the area east of the railroad berm, where he lives, with the drainage system on the other side.
Don said a Kent employee visited the area in March and looked at maps of the drainage system. According to Don, the pipe he had identified did not appear on the employee’s diagram.
“He showed me, rolled out a big old piece of paper, and there was crazy pipes and diagrams and wires, and this pipe legitimately wasn’t on this diagram,” Don said. “I’m like, ‘But it’s here. We’re looking at it.’”
Don said he later tried to test the connection himself by putting dye into the drainage system on one side of the berm.
“I put dye in it on that side, and it came out on this side,” he said. “So I know it’s the same water.”
He also argues the railroad berm itself is permeable enough for water to move through it.
“Railroad berms aren’t solid, so that’s a bunch of rock over there that lets water flow through this side,” Don said.
Kent, however, continues to maintain that its pump is not responsible for draining Don’s side of the railroad berm.
Records obtained by KIRO 7 also show that during last year’s flood, a Kent employee told one of Don’s neighbors, who lives on the same side of the berm, that city crews were working around the clock to move water.
“City crews were working desperately to try to keep the water flowing back into the river,” the employee wrote. “This work by city crews that went around the clock allowed your area to drain much quicker than it would have.”
For Don, those statements have added to his questions over exactly how the drainage systems on both sides of the railroad tracks interact.
Pump to be raised five feet
Kent maintains that its pump was not responsible for the flooding on Don’s property.
The city is, however, making changes before another major flood.
Kent is working to raise the pump approximately five feet so high water does not threaten the equipment and force the city to shut it down again.
For Don and his family, the question is whether those changes, and other work in the area, will be enough the next time the Green River rises.
“I want record-breaking flooding to see if it actually goes, if they fixed it, because that’s the only way I’ll trust them,” he said.
For now, after months of rebuilding, another rainy season is approaching and Don is waiting to see what happens.