Officials shrug as homeowners battle overflow of Wasilla Creek

WASILLA — The Felthauser family may live on a street called “Winding Brook” in a 100-year floodplain near Wasilla Creek, but they don’t appreciate being ignored by borough and state officials as their homes and properties are suddenly engulfed in icy creek water.

“If this was a higher-end neighborhood like Equestrian Acres, this wouldn’t have lasted five minutes,” Candy Felthauser said Wednesday as she and her husband Pat pumped more than two feet of creek water out of their basement. “No one has even come out here to see it and it’s been getting steadily worse for more than a week.”

When the Felthauser’s first heard about upstream neighbor Debbi Killian pumping an estimated 167,000 gallons of creek water encroaching on her property near the Four Corners Bar the weekend of Jan. 30, they blamed her for their troubles.

“She didn’t think about where all that water was going,” Candy said before quickly catching herself when she heard Killian’s theory of why the water was loosened in the first place. “Truth is, we would have done the same thing if we were in her place. What else can you do?”

Killian, who helps run Jerry’s Used Furniture store near the corner of Palmer-Wasilla Highway and Trunk Road, believes a metered device connected to the culverts where Wasilla Creek runs under the Palmer-Wasilla Highway was switched on at some point to allow the water to thaw and flow through.

Since the Alaska Deptment of Transportation is responsible for installing the culverts during upgrades to the highway in the recent past, Killian and Mat-Su Borough Floodplain Manager Pam Ness say it’s ultimately up to the state to investigate the issue.

“I’ve been here 15 years and nothing like this ever happened before,” Killian said. “As soon as they put those two huge culverts in there last summer, that’s when things changed. But I can’t get the state to admit they’re at fault.”

Calls by the Frontiersman to DOT Mat-Su Manager Neil Henslee Wednesday were not returned.

Killian said that when she first noticed water flowing down from under the highway toward her home only 25 feet from Wasilla Creek a few weeks ago, she began calling borough and state officials.

“They kept telling me it was just a natural occurrence and that they couldn’t do anything about it because I was in a floodplain,” she said. “The borough’s emergency services guy Tom Smayda brought me 500 unfilled sandbags and told me I would have to fill them myself. Although I appreciated his help, I didn’t have time to mess with sandbags. The water was coming faster and harder and I had to stop it or it was going to be in my house.”

So she rented a large trash pump from Home Depot at a cut rate of $90 and spent the next 12 hours the night of Jan. 30 suctioning water from her yard and dumping it back into the creek.

Finally, at 1 in the morning that Monday, the water froze the intake valve and she was done.

“This isn’t natural – it’s a man-made flippin’ problem,” Killian said. “Whenever they alter these creeks, this is what happens.”

Ness said Wednesday that although she’s sympathetic to Killian and the Felthauser family, she feels her hands are tied and that homeowners need to accept some of the responsibility for living so close to a creek in a known floodplain.

“Every year, there’s a 1 percent chance of it happening and this must be the magic year it happened,” Ness said. “When you live in a low-lying area along a creek and you have thawing and freezing like we’ve had this year and the water isn’t soaking into the ground and it’s not evaporating, it builds up and this is the result. That’s why we advise people to build higher up or at least elevate their homes in areas like that.”

But the Felthausers find that attitude hard to swallow. Within their three modest, hand-built homes along North Winding Brook Loop are:

• Don Felthauser, an 80-year-old grandfather whose driveway is disappearing under the creek

• Don’s son Paul, who’s legally blind and needs a heart transplant

• Paul’s wife Melissa Crockett, a wheelchair-dependent diabetic who’s on oxygen 24 hours a day and worries about the water knocking the electricity out – making it impossible to use her oxygen tank

• Don’s other son Pat, a wheelchair-bound veteran

• Pat’s unemployed wife Candy and their teen-aged children

Pat and Candy’s 17-year-old daughter Laura agrees with her mother when it comes to feeling shunned because of their economic status.

“It’s like authorities don’t consider us to have any bearing on anything,” said Laura, an honor student at Mat-Su Career and Technical Center. “I remember reading about stuff like this, where those who have a higher status are treated differently than those who are lower. It’s not right.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.