Federal grants help elevate houses over troubled waters

Published 1:25 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE – Anyone who lives in Snoqualmie can appreciate the area’s natural beauty.

There are open fields, dense forests and beautiful mountain views. But it comes with a price: a river that tends to overstep its boundaries.

The Snoqualmie River has been a perennial worry during the rainy fall and winter months ever since the city was founded. Almost every year has some amount of flooding, with large floods serving as chapters to Snoqualmie’s history. Tales are still swapped about the flood of November 1990.

After the floods of 1995 and 1996, state and federal officials realized the devastation wreaked on houses in the floodplain and started to offer the area flood protection that went beyond the insurance policies many residents already had.

Since then, Snoqualmie has participated in three grant programs offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that provide homeowners some solutions to their flood woes.

For the complete story, read this weeks Valley Record