The reasonableness of having critical area ordinances to protect ourselves and our properties are put to the test by nature herself. Recent slides, damage to the environment, and rain-soaked hillsides are wreaking havoc throughout Kitsap County just as records for continuous days of rainfall are being set.

Kitsap County recently adopted revisions to the Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) to reflect a review and consideration of Best Available Science (BAS), as required by the Growth Management Act [RCW 36.70A.172(1)].

And that decision has been contentious on several fronts; as environmentalists warn it was not enough to protect sensitive areas, property rights advocates contend that stricter regulations are not warranted, and some members of the planning commission question the determination of what’s critical.

In a work study session Jan. 11 Commissioner Chris Endresen, one of two commissioners who supported broadening the ordinance, said, “The amount of rainfall we’ve experienced exposes just the kind of problems that the ordinance was intended to protect. I think when it’s dry we all tend to forget about this. I think the stability of these slope areas is questionable and I would like to see these slides and weather-related problems documented.”

Across the county, city and county public works crews and state department of transportation officials have been inundated by reports of slides.

In Poulsbo, a Front Street building is in danger of falling into Liberty Bay when part of the slope sloughed off in December of 2004. The city acted by restricting access to the cafe’s back room to protect the public due to the extent of damage to the underlying slope supporting the building’s foundation. Recent rains have further compromised the building’s stability and emergency repairs have begun on the bulkhead.

At a 3rd Avenue location on Jan. 10, North Kitsap Fishline sustained a slide from a steep embankment into its parking lot, closing the food bank until city crews built a temporary retaining wall with 4,000-pound concrete blocks. By Jan. 12 however, exacerbated by increasing rains, mud and tree roots in the overlooking cliff were observed. In spite of the emergency measure, the fix is not likely to hold the cliff indefinitely, placing Fishline’s building in danger.

“In the south end of the county, Sunny Cove experienced a slide between Christmas December 25 and New Years Day. These photos are of the finished work.” reported South District Road Supervisor Jim McCready.

On Jan. 20, Kitsap County Public Works North Road Department Supervisor Paul Woods provided photos showing the slides that closed Sawdust Hill Road between Stottlemyer and Big Valley Road. Crews dispatched Jan. 18 near the Big Valley Road intersection found a 50-foot section where soils beneath the road and along the road’s shoulder had broken away revealing a two-foot gap between the surface and where the shoulder slid. The road was closed indefinitely after engineers determined that saturated soils had become unstable.

Highway 166 between Gorst and Port Orchard near the Sinclair Inlet was closed from the intersection of Highway 16 to Port Orchard Boulevard Jan. 7 due to a mudslide after heavy rains. Don Shultz, Kitsap County roads supervisor, noted that Hwy 166 is a state road though there are two homes that have been affected by the slides. Slope restoration is being handled by Transportation Department maintenance crews and contractors with 3,500 tons of quarry rock to stabilize the slope after geologists determined that it was unsafe.

In a response to the CAO published in last month’s issue of the KBJ, the Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners (KAPO) a local property rights group, stated, “Since the implementation of the regulation is triggered by application for a permit to develop, if there is no application there will be no regulated protection. There is a demonstrated lack of common sense in a law that would base its need on protecting all critical areas of the county and then establish a process that eliminates vast areas of the county from such regulation.”

Across the Northwest homes are in danger of sliding away as persistent rain loosens soil on hillsides. More people are evacuating in Oregon City after their homes started to slide. Several families have been forced to leave; the Red Cross is helping them out. If the homes are destroyed, those families will have to pay for repairs out of their own pockets; as homeowner’s policies do not cover damage from mudslides. Mudslides are covered only if they are driven by flooding, and the mud rises up from a creek or river bed into a home.

A whole host of factors can affect the prevailing homeowners rate in a given state — including regulatory policy (source: MSN Money 1-2006).

And property owners are increasingly holding cities and local government responsible when insurance companies won’t pay.

The permitting agencies approved the projects and property owners are now asking why.

The Native Forest Council reported in March 2005 that the Northwest has weathered earthquakes, wildfires, floods, ice storms and powerful windstorms. But the deadliest natural disasters have been slides. And each year the risk of death, injury and catastrophic property damage rises as more residents seek wooded retreats and valley views in the rainy hills.

The problem, some say, is that people forget what happens when it rains for weeks on end, the ground swells with water and hillsides let loose. In a bone-dry year, no one in the Northwest is talking about rain-triggered slides, said Gunnar Schlieder, a certified engineering geologist in Eugene, Oregon.

Today, developers continue to build on slopes under pretty much the same land use guidelines in place before the deadly 1996 slides. In places like Eugene, where vacant land on level ground is in short supply, builders increasingly have turned to the remaining — and often steepest — hillside lots where development is risky. “We still have a long way to go in understanding landslide risk and developing planning procedures that are built off that risk,” said Andre Le Duc, director of the Oregon Natural Hazards Workgroup.

The Department of Geology and Mineral Industries was tasked with mapping everything west of the Cascades to identify areas susceptible to large, rapid slides — the kind most likely to threaten lives, destroy homes and block highways.

Lawmakers had hoped these maps would help city and county planners better evaluate proposals for new homes and other developments on steep slopes. When the state released the maps two years later, many found the scale — based on topographical maps from the U.S. Geological Survey — far too broad to be of any use.

The Seattle Red Cross reports that landslides are a serious geologic hazard common to almost every state in the United States. It is estimated that nationally they cause up to $2 billion in damages and from 25 to 50 deaths annually. Globally, landslides cause billions of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths and injuries each year.

“If nature were allowed to exist all by itself, there would be landslides,” said David Howell of the U.S. Geological Survey in a report to CNN. “But man is also exacerbating landslides... cutting notches in hillsides, moving dirt, cutting out pads for houses, building roads — all that is destabilizing.”

While going back to correct decades and sometimes century old development would offer some degree of protection, large-scale fixes are not generally feasible or practical. While many conservation and restoration efforts are taking place across the county, these are baby steps at a cost of millions of dollars to the public… or the few property owners willing to foot the bill. The old adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” comes to mind as we look to the future. And maybe we need to be restricting where housing can be placed.

Life is so hard because it gives us the test first, then the lesson (Unknown). Perhaps nature’s cruel lesson here is that absolute knowledge of critical areas and prediction of these disasters is beyond our expertise and, like other governmental controls, is better left to the experts.