Cultivating Hope

After the record-breaking floods in November, farmers and community members in western Washington are looking for solutions.

Story by Vivian Voth // Photos by Max Widjaja

March 16, 2022

On Nov. 15, 2021, rain poured from the sky, turning fields into lakes and roads into rivers.

The banks of the Nooksack River swelled while farmers pumped water from their fields through the night, evacuated their homes and watched the floodwaters erode the riverbank, sweeping full-sized trees downstream.

Knowing there was nothing they could do in the face of Mother Nature’s storm, the farmers of Whatcom County watched helplessly as water wreaked havoc on fields and ate away acres of their riverside property.

Even before the prolonged rainstorm that swept through western Washington in November, Bellingham saw record rain, with one creek gauge reporting almost 30 centimeters of rainfall in two days. With nowhere else to go, the water breached the banks of the Nooksack and flooded the communities of Everson, Nooksack and Sumas.

“It was two o’clock in the morning and I felt the rush of water around my legs… [As the dike broke] I heard two loud booms, and I decided, ‘I’m done.’ I’m going inside, I’m going to sleep and there is no way that the battle will be won,” said Sküter Fontaine, the co-owner of Terra Verde Farm in Everson.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.” — Sküter Fontaine

The agricultural industry in Whatcom County has played a critical role in Washington’s culture, economy and environment for 150 years. The fertile soil in the floodplains of the Skagit and Nooksack River valleys makes for ideal farmland, but it also puts farmers at high risk during floods.

Months after the flood, farmers in Whatcom County are still recovering.

As Fontaine drives around his property, memories of the flood are everywhere he looks. Next to his vegetable plot on the west side of the Nooksack River, a shipping container the length of two SUVs had moved 15 meters from the floodwaters, and a thick layer of river silt still covered the floors and seats of farm equipment. He points to a spot chest-high on his tractor where the water level reached during the flood. On his phone, he shows a video of water spewing out of the engine where only oil is supposed to be.

Fontaine and his wife Amy used their savings to buy their farmland and equipment in 2007. He estimates they lost between $50,000 and $70,000 in November’s flood, more than what an average American farmer makes in a year — $44,000.

Countywide, the flooding caused over $100 million in damages, making it 10 times more expensive than any previous flood in county history, said John Gargett, the deputy director of the Division of Emergency Management at Whatcom County’s Sheriff’s Office

“What we used to think [of as] a 100-year flood — which means every year there’s only a 1% chance of flooding — may turn into a 20-year flood. And that is frightening because the amount of rainfall we experienced was one of the highest it’s ever been recorded for Whatcom County,” said Roland Middleton, the special programs manager and the community and tribal liaison for Whatcom County Public Works.

The Nooksack River has a history of flooding. The U.S. Geological Survey’s first recorded flood for the river was in 1930, and each year several roads are closed due to seasonal flooding. However, as development in the floodplain increases, “Floods will just get more expensive as time goes on,” Middleton said.

Although President Biden approved federal funding through FEMA to help people who were impacted by the flooding in Washington state, many assistance programs have a maximum payout that doesn’t cover the full losses, Gargett said.

“You’re never going to be made whole from any assistance after the event,” Gargett said. “Even if you got paid 100% of what you lost. There is no way any program is going to replace family photographs or things that were washed or thrown away.”

During the flood, Phyllis Seren, a co-owner of 3 Rivers Farm, located along the North Fork of the Nooksack River near Deming, stood in full rain gear as she watched the normally peaceful river churn with muddy water and white-capped rapids that rose higher each day, cracking and crumbling the riverbank.

Seren’s tears further saturated the soil as she watched the river devour an acre of her property.

“It’s still hard for me to go down there,” she said.

Luckily, Seren’s house was far enough from the river that her home wasn’t damaged.

Farmers like Fontaine did not share the same luck, who woke in the morning to find his house surrounded by water up to their car’s windows and picnic tables that were swept away by the floodwaters, never to be found.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” Fontaine said.

Plans to widen levees, remove sediment from the river and raise or buy out select houses in flood zones to mitigate the impact of future flooding are all being discussed. But each solution comes with setbacks and side effects.

Dredging the river would remove sediment from the bottom in hopes of deepening it to reduce the risk of overflow flooding. However, putting machinery in the river could disrupt or destroy fish habitat, Middleton said, which is a significant cultural and economic resource for the communities in Whatcom county, especially the Nooksack Indian Tribe and the Lummi Nation.

Widening and raising levees would increase the river’s capacity to hold more floodwaters, but it would increase the speed of the water and direct it downstream, flooding all of Ferndale and a section of the I-5 corridor.

Because there is no one individual or agency that makes decisions for the river, a major issue in finding a solution for flood mitigation is communication. The U.S. government, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Nooksack Tribe, Lummi Nation and Whatcom County all have a say in what happens.

While county officials recognize the importance of taking prompt action, it will be difficult to find a solution everyone agrees on.

“We have to ensure that all of the players come to the table and have an equal voice in the conversation. That has to happen. We cannot give up,” Middleton said. “We have to have hope.”

Gargett suggested looking at the underlying reason for why flooding and the damages are increasing.

“It’s not just that the dikes aren’t high enough, and the river isn’t deep enough,” he said. “It speaks to the ability of society to realize, perhaps, that rivers need to run their natural course, combined with land use planning issues.”

Farmers, residents of Whatcom County, tribal members and county officials alike are holding onto hope for a less devastating future, but there are no mitigation plans in place yet, said Bruce Bosch, the mayor of Sumas.

On Feb. 14, the Fontaine family and their neighbors got a letter from the city asking if they wanted to be a part of a volunteer buyout to move people away from the river.

“I would love to put my house on higher ground,” Fontaine said. “Our concerns around moving outweigh our concerns about staying,” he said as he stared out into the field as if he could still see the water pooling around his house.

“We don’t have any place to go.”

Vivian Voth is a senior environmental education student at the College of the Environment with a passion for sustainable agriculture and helping youth fall in love with the outdoors.