His Dikes Didn't Wash Away

Snohomish County's periodic problem with flooding rivers could be solved easily, says knowledgeable oldtimer who has spent his life on the river

Tennis ``T.A.'' Roetcisoender was born in a log cabin on the Snohomish River, and he's spent most of his 83 years living and working along its banks.

When the Thanksgiving floods hit, Roetcisoender's house was the only bottom-land dwelling for miles around that didn't take on water. It was high and dry atop a mound of heavy landfill, originally brought down from the mountains to support the old Milwaukee Railroad that ran through Roetcisoender's fields.

``If we ever get water in our house, everyone else on our road would be standing up drinking water in their front rooms,'' he said.

The dikes he built over the years along Ebey Slough didn't rupture, either. His 98-acre cattle pasture along the Snohomish is a wasteland, with deep craters formed by rushing waters and logs and uprooted trees deposited in sandy heaps. But the dike that blew wasn't one of his.

This man knows about water - how to keep it in rivers, and how to drain it from fields.

``A lot of people don't know it, but the Snohomish River is the largest river in the world for its length,'' he said, referring to the volume of water it carries.

``When I was a kid, the tugs went all the way to Fall City. It's hard to believe, now you can't get beyond Snohomish. The river needs dredging real bad.''

Most people know Roetcisoender from his decades of operating a drag line, a piece of excavating equipment used to dig ditches and build dikes.

``I've known him as an excellent operator. I've always thought very highly of his work, and enjoyed the man,'' said Ward Lawler, head of the Coordinated Diking Council.

If Roetcisoender was in charge of the river system, he knows what he'd do. That is, if he didn't have to bother with environmentalists.

First he'd build three more reservoir dams - two on the Snoqualmie River's north and middle forks, and one on the Skykomish River. Bellevue needs water and Seattle will too, as it continues to grow, he said.

He's steamed that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers once won funding from Congress to build the middle-fork dam, ``then that darned (former Gov. Dan) Evans vetoed it.''

If dams are out of the question, then Roetcisoender would settle for dredging. The rivers will keep rising unless their bottoms are occasionally scraped. Dike-builders once were allowed to run their equipment in the rivers, using bottom silt to fortify and heighten the dikes. Environmentalists ended that.

If dredging remains outlawed, then he'd do something about clear-cutting, which he blames for increased runoff of water and silt into the river system.

Roetcisoender was a logger in the late 1920s and throughout the Depression. The Olympic Peninsula had just been opened up with the completion of Highway 101 when he went to work for the U.S. Forest Service. In 1934, he said, he operated the first diesel bulldozer ever used in the state of Washington.

He and his bride lived at the mouth of the Hoh River, while loggers felled the Peninsula's huge fir trees for the first time.

``They called that the last frontier,'' said his wife, Lillian, who celebrates her 81st birthday this month. They have been married 61 years.

Roetcisoender is proud of his logging past, but he thinks clear-cutters are careless now. Mountain slopes must always be replanted, he said. ``We've logged too much, too far now. They should stop it,'' he said.

Roetcisoender - his Dutch name is pronounced ``Root-see-saunder'' - was born about 10 miles upriver from the town of Snohomish. His mother was pregnant with him during the long trip from Holland. His parents became dairy farmers, shipping milk to Seattle.

After the Roetcisoenders married, they spent about 10 years on the peninsula before returning to the Snohomish River.

They acquired their first 46 acres of riverfront property in a $14,750 deal that included 12 head of dairy cattle and a Ford tractor. Later they added 36 acres and two railroad right-of-ways.

In 1950 he was named ``conservation farmer of the year'' by the Snohomish Soil Conservation District for draining and farming his rich bottom land. It was covered with bull rushes when he bought it.

``People were lined up in the road (to watch). `You don't plow this kind of land,' they said.''

The Roetcisoenders became famous for their dairy operation, Roetta Farms, which produced an award-winning line of Guernsey cows. For 16 years they showed grand-champion cows at the Evergreen State Fair, and in 1967 one of their Guernseys won Canada's National Grand Champion contest.

In 1970, the herd was the second-highest producing in the nation. When Roetta Farms sold out in 1973, a Milwaukee dairy bought all 63 cows, seven yearlings and three bulls and airlifted them to Wisconsin.

Throughout his dairy-farming years, Roetcisoender continued to work outside jobs. He built roads, dikes, water lines, and bridges. He still works his own land, and is preparing to rebuild his washed-out barbed wire fences and reseed his fields.

``In town they used to tell me, `Tennis, you're crazy. You're working too hard. You're gonna die young.' Now I'm alive and they've died,'' he said with a laugh.