K-Beach residents, officials mull flood solutions at meeting

Residents impacted by flooding around the northwest portion of Kalifornsky Beach Road converged in Soldotna last week to brainstorm solutions to the high water levels that have been damaging their property this year.

The meeting was organized by David Yragui, a resident in the area who has long worked to offset the effects of the area’s high water on his property. He called on residents and on the Kenai Peninsula Borough to take action in response to the flooding, which he’s been fighting for more than a decade.

The same area of Kalifornsky Beach Road flooded so severely in 2013 that a federal disaster was declared. This year, residents have felt the effects of a heavy rain and snow season, which raised the area’s already-high water table and led to flooding. Since breakup, residents have reported flooded septics, standing water in their homes and washed-out roads, among other things.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough has struggled with how to most effectively manage the damage while not stepping outside of its authority as a second-class borough. The borough doesn’t have flood powers, and so must devise solutions within its more narrowly defined road service and drainage powers.

In the middle of the debate is Yragui, a longtime resident and developer in the area against whom the borough filed suit earlier this summer. The borough alleges that Yragui’s attempts to mitigate flood damage to his property, particularly digging ditches and otherwise diverting water, are making flooding worse for other property owners in his neighborhood.

Yragui disagrees, arguing that he is trying to take matters into his own hands in the wake of what he calls inaction by the Kenai Peninsula Borough. In a separate matter, Yragui is fighting the borough in court with regard to his property taxes, which he said he won’t pay, also because of that inaction.

Roughly 40 people attended Yragui’s meeting, which was held last Thursday at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex. Next to water bottles and coffee at the back of the room were plastic containers available for people interested in testing the water at their residence for contaminants.

At the front of the room was an easel covered with maps made and collected by Yragui over the years. In attendance besides Yragui were Jim Munter, a former hydrologist with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and Kenai resident Toby Burke, a wildlife biologist, who both offered their thoughts about K-Beach flooding during the meeting, which stretched for just over three hours.

Yragui spent the first hour of the meeting explaining the history of flooding in the neighborhood, denouncing the borough lawsuit against his ditching activities and outlining steps residents can take to be proactive when it comes to flood response.

He explained his understanding of the area’s hydrology and why he disagrees with the borough’s classification of the area as a “wetlands,” as well as how he wants to see the borough respond to flooding. Made available to attendees was a meeting agenda prepared by Yragui that contained an itemized list of 14 “action items” he says would mitigate problems associated with high water.

The to-do list includes installing a new culvert that runs diagonally across Patrick Street, installing a ditch along Kalifornsky Beach Road from Eastway Road to Helmsman Avenue, cleaning out streams and installing culvert thaw systems, among other things. Yragui also wants to see a culvert installed at Milepost 12.1 of Kalifornsky Beach Road, near Trawling Avenue.

To residents, Yragui recommended inspecting the monitoring tubes on their leach fields to see if their field is flooded, to use bottled water if they suspect their water may be contaminated and to be mindful of how they remove water from their crawl spaces. He also suggested that residents appeal their borough taxes and cite “lack of any concise action” by the borough with regard to road ditches.

“You’re my employee,” Yragui said of the borough. “You work for me. If you’re not doing your job, I ain’t paying you. I’m not giving you money to not work. So, the bottom line is, appeal your taxes. Don’t pay for an employee that doesn’t do their job. Period.”

Residents share

Residents who attended Thursday’s meeting expressed frustration at the way high water levels have affected their properties and voiced an interest in finding meaningful solutions.

Mary Dodge, who said she lives on Patrick Drive, said her property has been “quite flooded” and that she worries about how the high water affects her property value.

“I think that all of us want a solution,” Dodge said. “We can’t sell our properties. They’re worth nothing. We have to disclose flooding, if we list our properties for sale and it has nothing to do with us. I want a solution.”

Merrie “Brandy” Culp-Washburn, who said she lives in the Karluk Acres subdivision, said her property survived the 2013 flood in addition to what she’s experienced this year. After 2013, she said she had her house lifted and got a new foundation put in. The water still filled their new 5-foot crawl space.

“It went all the way to the top of that 5-foot crawl space. I had mold,” Culp-Washburn said. “I had a swimming pool in there that was dirty. And I was so disgusted and working so hard trying to work it out that I ended up having a minor stroke.”

Karl Straume, who lives on Patrick Drive with his wife, Tiffany, organized a Facebook group where residents are encouraged to share how flooding in the area has affected them.

The borough responds

Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche joined the meeting for about an hour to lay out the borough’s strategy for addressing high water problems in the area, to respond to some of the claims made by Yragui and to field questions from attendees.

Micciche highlighted the work that’s been done in the area since he took office in February, which includes $300,000 worth of drainage improvements along Eastway Road and a recent decision to hire an independent hydrologist to study the area. Borough assembly members approved last week $175,000 for the study.

Micciche reiterated to attendees that the borough must work within its authority, which does not include flood control, in addressing high water issues. He pointed to solutions borough residents in other areas have implemented, such as Seward’s implementation of a flood service area, and said the borough is putting together a document aimed at helping future property owners know what to look for when buying or building a home.

“We have committed an enormous amount of resources, we will continue to do that,” Micciche said. “We will work with everyone involved to find solutions. That’s a guarantee. If you haven’t noticed a difference of activity between the last three months and the 15 years before, you’re not in that area as much as I am.”

After some attendees accused the borough of providing “lip service” to residents, Micciche said he cannot promise “magical solutions.”

“What I can promise is we’re going to be committed and we’re going to keep working on this project until we provide a reasonable pathway and some solutions to the problems you’re seeing in most years,” Micciche said. “Can I deal with Armageddon, when it occurs? That’s going to be difficult. I can’t promise that.”

“It feels like Armageddon,” Culp-Washburn responded.

As he was leaving, Micciche and Yragui debated from opposite sides of the room the conditions that must be met for a disaster declaration to be made. Micciche said he couldn’t skirt laws dictating what constitutes a disaster, while Yragui said residents are already experiencing what they consider to be a disaster.

“There’s a lot of people that are at the threshold right now,” Yragui said. “They’re losing their homes. That may not (be) an emergency for you, but it’s an emergency for them. As a community, we can take action, come hell or high water.”

Micciche pushed back.

“It’s an emergency for me,” Micciche said. “That doesn’t mean I can skirt federal law declaring an emergency, or state law. We still have to reach that threshold. We’re trying to get there … There are rules. You can’t ignore them.”

The Dog Fish Avenue culvert

Yragui also highlighted his concerns about a state culvert that runs under Kalifornsky Beach Road at Dog Fish Avenue. The earth around the end of the culvert that sticks out on the Cook Inlet side is visibly eroded, almost up to the road. The culvert is bent and leaking, covered partially on top with fallen trees and a guardrail.

“Dog Fish is washing out. It’s got 30 feet of culvert exposed right now and you can see the holes in the bottom of the culvert. So it’s just a matter of time,” Yragui said.

Justin Shelby, an administrative operations manager with the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said Monday that the department’s short-term plan for the Dog Fish Avenue culvert is to focus on stabilizing the existing structure. That means re-establishing the bedding under the culvert and topping it off with rock to help prevent further erosion.

Shelby said the department doesn’t yet have an exact timeline for short- or long-term solutions for the Dog Fish culvert, but said they would like to see the short-time reinforcements happen by the end of the current construction season. How quickly the work gets started, he said, depends on how quickly state crews on other parts of the peninsula finish their scheduled work for the season.

“This is one of many drainage issues in the area that we’re looking at,” Shelby said.

Last year’s heavy precipitation, he said, has created similar drainage problems in other parts of Southcentral Alaska. Partnership between the state and local agencies, he said, “is absolutely necessary.” Shelby said the department has been in contact with the Kenai Peninsula Borough regarding flooding, and their role will be to support the borough’s plan for the area.

“A lot of these underlying drainage issues have been exacerbated,” Shelby said of the impacts of heavy precipitation.

At Dog Fish Avenue, he said long-term solutions could include reinforcing the existing culvert with a lining or completely digging up and replacing it. It can be difficult to predict how future weather events or water conditions will affect the existing erosion, Shelby said, but the department is aware of the erosion’s proximity to Kalifornsky Beach Road.

“It is a concern,” Shelby said.

Looking ahead, the borough’s hydrology study of the area is meant to result in long-term solution recommendations for the area. Borough assembly members also clarified that, as part of the $175,000 approved for the study, $25,000 must be set aside for the purchase of minor water monitoring equipment to provide data that will back up those recommendations.

Kenai Peninsula Borough Planning Director Robert Ruffner said Monday that the borough has secured a contract with HDL Engineering Consultants LLC, out of Anchorage, to review the recently completed drainage project along Eastway Road, as well as how that project connects with existing private ditches in the area. The contract, Ruffner said, is for less than $14,000.

Reach reporter Ashlyn O’Hara at ashlyn.ohara@peninsulaclarion.com.