Homeowners blame urban development, county for Lake Serene flooding

SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash.-- “We’re the victims,” says Doug Hageman. “The only victims when the watershed does not function correctly.”

Hageman is one of the 95 lakefront homeowners on an over-full Lake Serene. It’s a little lake with some big problems in unincorporated Snohomish County near Lynnwood.

The homeowners around the lake are being told to pick up 22 percent of the $800,000 cost of an emergency fix to drain the lake that’s currently flooding into many of the backyards and basements of those around Lake Serene.

“It’s just so easy to me who filled up the lake,” says Hageman. “Snohomish County Planning and Development and Snohomish County Public Works, easily proven with a paper trail.”

The county’s own watershed map of Lake Serene shows this once mostly forested land is now a sea of development. Hundreds of new rooftops, driveways, patios, streets and sidewalks. Snohomish County is one of the fastest growing in the entire state.

There are around 40 lakes in the Snohomish County lowlands that the county monitors. Many of them are surrounded by homes and developments, like Lake Stevens. But this rainy season, the only one with flooding issues has been Lake Serene.

Hageman, a retired real estate developer himself, says he knows why.

“Just take an areal map from 1979, then '89, '99, and 2017. It’s all paved. All that is impervious now,” says Hageman. “They never even thought the lake might fill up someday.”

That someday is today. This winter the rains have been at or above normal for several months. February will likely go down as the third wettest ever for the Seattle area -- records that go back to the mid-1890s.

Hageman shares some county title records that show easements for drainage that go downhill into the roughly 14-acre Lake Serene. The small lake itself used to drain naturally into Norma Creek in the winter, which flows into Puget Sound. That creek was put into an 18-inch pipe and buried in the 1970s.

 

“Flowing fine to me,” says Hageman. He shows Q13 News one of the few places where Norma Creek is above ground. It’s fast and frothy  and full -- but only a few inches deep as it winds through a few backyards and then dives into another culvert to go underneath a road and a subdivision.

Snohomish County’s Surface Water Utility Director Will Hall says that level should be much higher than just a few inches.  “The best we can tell is now, the pipe has either completely collapsed or it’s nearly completely blocked.”

Hall’s crews are working to dig a long trench along the public access boat launch to law new bypass pipe, effectively going around the broken one that’s been managing the lake level here for years for 40 years. Hall says the county only knew the pipe draining the lake was clogged since last month. He says it’s a quick but needed fix for this flooding emergency.

“Everybody in the watershed and, in fact, in the larger area of unincorporated Snohomish County is already paying surface water utility fees. And that’s what’s going to pay more than three quarters of the cost of this project.”

 

For Hageman, and fellow lakefront homeowners, their portion of the project for this quick fix would price out about $2,000 a household. He says the county has told the homeowners could pay it in chunks of $175-$200 a year for a decade. But, he says it’d be more fair to charge every property in the watershed that’s been filling up Lake Serene.

He thinks many of the homeowners have been talking about filing a class-action lawsuit against the county for negligence. Hageman says he just wants what’s common sense and what’s fair. “The watershed is not functioning, and everyone in the watershed is equal.”

Snohomish County has said the property owners that actually border the lake are the ones getting the direct benefit of lowering lake water levels immediately and that’s why they’re being assessed more. When asked about un-burying Norma Creek and letting nature do the work, Will Hall with Snohomish County Public Works says that’s a much longer-term plan that would take more time, money, land, planning and consideration.

Hall says the immediate concern is the flooded homes right now.

Construction on the bypass pipe is expected to last through the weekend.