Mixed Feelings On Flood Buyout -- Cedar River Residents Say That The Price Must Be Right

MAPLE VALLEY - The Cedar River is so central to the life of this secluded neighborhood along Dorre Don Way Southeast that Bill and Eleanor Stipp call the small lawn on the river side of their house the ``front yard.''

Their ``back yard'' - the side facing the street - remains a mass of mud dropped there by the river when it last went on a rampage three months ago.

That was Thanksgiving week, when their propane tank broke loose, their shed was washed into a neighbor's yard and their motor home sustained more than $10,000 damage.

After 22 years, the Stipps have learned to live with the river and its vagaries. After the devastating 1975 flood, they raised the foundation of their house 40 inches. The house came through last November's flood high and dry, while water swept around their yard.

The Stipps have mixed feelings about King County's latest idea about coping with floods. Faced with the continuing cost and aggravation of fighting floods, the county is thinking of throwing in the towel - of buying the low-lying properties here and letting nature take its course.

``I don't think, from the people I've talked to in the neighborhood, anybody wants to sell,'' says Eleanor Stipp.

Bill is more receptive to the idea: ``If the price is right, I'll sell. Everything I have is for sale.''

The Lower Dorre Don area, where King County's Surface Water Management Division proposes to buy out 35 to 50 homes, is one of seven areas in King County being considered for buyouts.

Five of those flood-prone areas are in South King County, four on the Cedar River.

The South King County areas are:

-- Lower Dorre Don, where up to $7.5 million could be spent to buy and remove homes. The number of buyouts would depend on flood-control measures taken upstream at the Seattle Water Department's Chester Morse Dam.

-- Cedar Grove Trailer Court, where mobile-home residents and their neighbors face ``severe'' threats to their personal safety. Buyout of 50 mobile homes and 12 conventional houses could cost $4.5 million.

-- Byers Road at Southeast 184th Street near Cedar Grove. Up to seven homes could be bought and removed, a levee abandoned and other measures taken, for $6.9 million.

-- Eighteen mobile homes and two single-family homes at the Riverbend and Ricardi levees along the Cedar River east of Renton, where buyouts would cost an estimated $1.3 million.

-- A glacier-created depression with no natural storm-water outlet in the South 142nd Street area of Burien. Here the county is studying two alternatives: flood-control structures for $1.2 million or property purchases for $2.5 million.

Initial cost estimates are based on $50,000 per mobile home and $150,000 per conventional house.

The county's Surface Water Management Division believes buyout of flood-prone properties would protect lives, reduce private and public costs due to repeated flooding, would boost salmon and steelhead production, and would provide permanent open space.

A flood-control plan, including the buyout proposal, is to be presented to the King County Council this spring.

Some Lower Dorre Don residents are unhappy with King County for allowing upstream development that swells the Cedar River during storms and for failing to repair a levee damaged in last November's flood. They blame the city of Seattle for the extent of the flooding that occurred after Seattle opened the floodgates at its Chester Morse Lake reservoir.

Bill Ziegner, a weekly newspaper publisher whose home and office sustained $40,000 of damage in the November flood, said he would be queasy about selling out, ``unless the personal gain was so attractive I couldn't refuse it. If they gave me 100,000 bucks, I would move out and move to Arizona, after the winter we've had.''

Chuck Buser, a music tutor whose house was ravaged and music studio tipped over by the November flood, said he likes living on a secluded stretch of the Cedar River. But he might be willing to sell, ``if the price was right.''

Dorre Don residents are not unanimous on whether the wooded banks of the Cedar should be in public or private hands.

Bonnie Keller's log home stands only a few paces from the river bank but is high enough that it escaped damage last fall. She doesn't want to sell.

``We like it out here so well,'' Keller said. ``Everybody that comes out here goes, `You just have the nicest place, just like a park.' ''

For at least one neighbor on higher ground, the Kellers' spectacular surroundings were bought at the expense of his own view. Raymond Jensen, who lives on Upper Dorre Don Way, said he ``can't care less'' whether the county buys out the homes that block his view.

``I have a natural gripe against the people living on the river,'' he said. ``They never should have been allowed to live on the river in the first place.''