Habitat for Humanity’s residential development project in Everson is a big deal in a city that desperately needs more housing.
It’s also in the Nooksack River floodplain, like much of Everson.
Building on an area of high flood hazard raises the question of how developers should weigh risk against a community’s need for development.
The nonprofit has taken precautions against water damage in its concept for Mateo Meadows, the planned mixed-income complex on Lincoln Street that will one day house 30 townhomes and eight apartments alongside commercial space.
Crawl spaces will be eliminated, running utilities through attics instead, and the units’ concrete floors will be built 2 feet above the base flood elevation, per Everson city code. Habitat broke ground on the site earlier this month and staff expect the first residents will be able to move in next fall.
But experts say whatever measures are taken, the area will always be vulnerable. And the memory of 2021’s devastating floods in the region is still fresh.
For Habitat’s Construction Director Chris van Staalduinen, something bigger is at stake.
“Do we abandon the north county because of the flooding or do we find a way to build resiliently?” he asked.
To him, the answer is clear.
“For us, north county is just as important as Bellingham,” van Staalduinen said.
Aftermath of 2021
Three years ago, the Nooksack River’s waters rose to historic highs, wreaking immense destruction in rural Whatcom County. Hundreds of families were forced to leave their homes due to damage and one Everson resident, Jose Garcia, was killed.
In Everson, the November 2021 floods damaged nearly 300 homes, Mayor John Perry said. Many of them were uninhabitable in the immediate aftermath. About six or seven houses on Main Street were lost and won’t be rebuilt.
The community also lost Everson Meadows, the 24-unit affordable housing complex run by the Bellingham & Whatcom County Housing Authorities that shut down in 2022.
Even before the floods, Everson Meadows needed extensive renovations, Andrew Calkins, the housing authority’s new executive director, said in an email. Though the units sustained “minimal damage” in the floods, the flood hazard in the area factored into the authority’s decision to shut it down as the state denied its funding request to rehabilitate the property.
“You’ve got so many families that were displaced right after the flood and then to take offline 24 more units, that’s a big deal,” Perry said. “Especially for when you’re talking low-income and typically farm workers, trying to find replacement housing for them and to stay within the community that they’ve lived in.”
Mateo Meadows promises to greatly expand housing options in the city after those depletions.
Its townhomes will offer a path to homeownership. Buyers will own the homes, while Habitat for Humanity will own the land they are on.
Habitat will rent out the apartments at affordable rates, van Staalduinen said. Rent for each unit would likely be based on a percentage of its tenant’s income. A quarter of the homes will be reserved for very low-income families.
Building in a floodplain
Is 2 feet above base flood elevation enough? Perry is comfortable with that number.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency calculates base flood elevation, a figure representing a water level that has a 1% chance of occurring each year. In other words, a once-every-hundred-years flood.
Nowhere in Everson saw water levels more than 2 feet over the base flood elevation in 2021, Perry said, and no homes built 1 foot above it got any water inside.
Requiring 2 feet above gives a “little bit more peace of mind that those units will stay dry during a flood,” he said.
Everson’s standard is higher than Washington state’s, which requires residential developers to build at least 1 foot above base flood elevation in high flood risk areas if their municipality participates in the National Flood Insurance Program.
Still, Perry acknowledges base flood elevation is an imperfect metric. For one thing, the data it’s based on is decades old — FEMA hasn’t updated the data used for flood mapping the lower Nooksack River region since the 1970s, said Paula Harris, Whatcom County flood planning and mitigation manager.
The federal agency has released updated draft maps, but those haven’t yet been finalized.
The age of the data means it cannot capture the higher frequency of extreme weather events due to climate change.
In 2021, many residents whose homes were damaged didn’t have flood insurance, Perry said, because they were not in a high flood hazard zone according to FEMA’s maps.
Though 2 feet above base flood elevation is safer than the state standard, “there’s always going to be a concern that maybe that makes them too complacent,” said Kayla Eicholtz, the Northwest regional floodplain management planner for the state Department of Ecology.
“Rivers are volatile,” she said. “Flooding is hard to predict.”
Julie Morse, who leads the Nooksack flood planning efforts for the state, agreed. The Nooksack is a dynamic river, she said. Even the river bottom is fluctuating.
“When you try to say, ‘Is one number good?’ — who knows?” she said. “We like to think these numbers keep us safe, but we need to recognize that rivers are living breathing systems that are always changing.”
Some areas of Whatcom County flooded 3 feet over base flood elevation in 2021, Morse said. Even if a house is elevated, people run into trouble getting home during a flood.
“There is always risk in a 100-year floodplain,” she said. “And it is the responsibility of homeowners and residents to understand the risk, regardless of the developer’s intentions.”
Meeting the need for housing
A hydraulic analysis commissioned by Habitat for Humanity found the development would have a negligible impact on flooding in the area.
Some people have approached Habitat with worries about flooding at the site, van Staalduinen said. Staffers tried to have discussions with all of them to explain their decision-making.
“We’ve heard and understood the concerns, but still feel like the need for housing is such that we need to move forward,” he said.
It’s not in Habitat’s interest to try to justify building where it shouldn’t, van Staalduinen stressed.
“We’re not looking to build the tenements of tomorrow,” he said. “We’re not a for-profit developer that’s just trying to find a way, stretch a regulation or an understanding to get it in, and cash out and then run away. We’re going to be the landowner of this property for the indefinite future.”
Sophia Gates covers rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. She is a Washington State Murrow Fellow whose work is underwritten by taxpayers and available outside CDN's paywall. Reach her at sophiagates@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 131.
