Leavenworth Stormwater Nightmares: Case studies on infrastructure planning carelessness

The historical tone deafness of the City to Leavenworth’s stormwater issues have repeatedly “bubbled up” across the City’s residential areas, creating nightmares for property owners and the environment. Leavenworth has often ignored residents’ concerns of insufficiently addressing fundamental infrastructure matters before pressing ahead with half-baked plans.

There are a couple stormwater case studies that exhibit the ongoing pattern of carelessness with very troubling local cause-andeffect consequences: Leavenworth Haus Apartments: Willkommen Village has been fraught with stormwater problems. It began when the City’s 2016 Stormwater/Wetland Management Plan conveniently eliminated using the rainon-snow data for stormwater system impacts.

During the Weidner (Leavenworth Haus) Apartments’ 2018 SEPA comment period, dozens of residents expressed concern that the SEPA should be re-done to properly address the actual traffic, environmental, parking and stormwater impacts of the proposed development. The City ignored those concerns, approving the DNS (Determination of NonSignificance} in March, 2018, stating, “No offsite mitigation is recommended.”

Moreover, per the City’s original Zeltstrasse 2017 plans, the increased stormwater was to run from Zeltstrasse to the Wenatchee River under a County Road, trespassing through private property downstream to the river. In April 2019, the City approved the apartments’ Excavation Permit, with no stormwater plan included. River Bend Park Association (RBPA) filed an appeal since they were concerned that major impervious surface development would cause property flooding in their neighborhood.

The Hearing Examiner validated RBPA’s concerns but denied the appeal because both the City and Weidner developers assured him that no occupancy permits would be issued before the stormwater system was properly functioning.

In December 2020, fully aware that the system was not retaining storm water from well-documented evidence of flooding during rain events, the City issued the first building occupancy permit anyway, and continued to do so as buildings were completed. Finally, after a year of requests from the community for testing the new systems that were overflowing, on July 8th 2021, both Zeltstrasse and the apartments’ engineer tests failed.

Recent assurances from the City of secured building bonds has not garnered trust of residents as their basements and property have continued to flood. To date, no actual plans have been submitted by the developer to the City to solve the issues. Neither has the City kept the developer’s feet to the fire.

Even more concerning is that the past patterns of Development Services minimizing and dismissing real problems brought up by the community will perpetuate issues as more condos, hotels and shops are built in Willkommen Village. Additionally, with Weidner’s disregard for the community members’ concerns, their new plan to fully develop even more rental units on the Meadowlark Property has the real potential for creating even more stormwater problems in that new geographical area.

Pinegrass: Anyone who has been around Leavenworth for more than 5 years is keenly aware of the wetland/ surface water issues around Pinegrass. There was a valid reason that land did not have apple orchards and remained undeveloped. In approving the new developments, the City closed their eyes to the endemic problems with the land, apparently being blinded by the need for more housing, maintaining a contextually unsupported theory that simply building more houses would equate to more affordable houses in a town with endless demand.

As with Leavenworth Haus, the City again claimed that engineering experts had mitigated the ground water issues by digging retention ponds. In fact, since the development opened, the new homeowners in Pinegrass are dealing with significant surface water issues, flowing under their homes, filling crawl spaces, etc.

Moreover, as more houses are built upstream, the increase of imperious surfaces will only increase downstream runoff and flooding, even into areas that may not have experienced surface water previously. Unfortunately, failing to address the elementary infrastructure matters before giving approval to potentially good ideas can lead to huge problems that are extremely hard to solve thereafter. Prudence requires putting the horse before the cart…the infrastructure preparation before the grand building plans.