PACIFIC, Wash. — As flooding season begins, residents in Pacific are fearing a repeat of last year’s devastation when a levee broke in their city, sending feet of water toward homes and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate in December 2025.
“What scares me is, it’s eight years until we have something permanently in place,” Pacific Mayor Vic Kave said. “And all they’ve done down there is put a system in place that failed during this last flood is not giving people in our community confidence.”
The system that failed was a series of HESCO Barriers installed as a temporary measure after several feet of flood water in 2009. A permanent solution has been in the works since. Jacqualine Boles’ saw her home flood last year and is worried a lack of permanent solution is leaving them at risk.
“We’re all fearful,” Boles said. “What are we supposed to do, sit here and wait again?”
Monday, King County Flood Control District (KCFCD), the special district tasked with flood infrastructure, presented a plan for the flood season and has been reinforcing HESCO’s since December. A long-term plan is still as long as eight years from being finished and the plan has yet to been cemented.
“They’re prioritizing the environment over people,” Kave said.
Kave, who has been frustrated with KCFCD’s communication since December, says the plan only looks to augment the water flows and doesn’t address sediment build up he believes has raised the bed of the river making it more likely to overtop levees and flood walls.
“They know that the aggradation and the sedimentation build up in the river continues to grow and is adversely affecting our community,” Kave said.
The KCFCD plan calls for extending the levee on the right side of the White River into Pacific Park, shrinking the park by various amounts depending on the plan that’s adopted. One of the plans is quoted at $159 million.
“They acknowledge it, it won’t solve the problem long term. At best, it was going to be a 50-year fix. How’s that a permanent solution?” Kave said. “How is that a responsible use of taxpayer dollars?”
In a call with KCFCD leadership, a representative didn’t respond to specifics, pointing to the public comment for the plan at Pacific City Hall Monday night. The representative did say there would be some parcels of land that will need to be bought out. Since the December flooding, they say six homes have taken part in the county’s voluntary buyout program and seven more are in the process.
The buyout program applies to communities who experienced or at risk of flooding at least twice in ten years. Boles qualifies for the program, but doesn’t know if she will find the same community she’s built in her neighborhood.
“I wish they would do what they said they were going to do in 2009, fix the wall,” Boles said. “Do what you said and do it expeditiously.”
Kave says the buyout program is tearing apart the town, or at the very least, its purse strings. Dozens of people opted to take the buyout in 2009, taking property taxes, sales taxes, and utility rate payments with them.
“It’s a hodgepodge. People who want to stay, will stay. The houses that are built, they’ll get tore down, and they’ll just be a house, a vacant lot, a house, a vacant lot. It just takes away from the fabric of the community,” Kave said.
In the southernmost end of King County, Boles hopes people don’t forget about the day she will never forget.
“Pacific is standing strong. Don’t forget about us. We are humans. And there’s somebody worse off than me,” Boles said.
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