Paula Parks and her husband have been living in their Education Hill home since 1995.

Living toward the top of the hill in the 9200 block of 166th Place Northeast, the last thing they thought they’d be dealing with was flooding. But that is exactly what they and a couple of their neighbors are dealing with currently.

ALL OF A SUDDEN

For Parks, it began a few weeks ago when water began rushing into her 94-year-old mother-in-law’s downstairs bedroom from the closet like a faucet. The water flooded the bedroom and seeped through to the entire floor. Parks said they put everything up on cinderblocks and used a shopvac to suck up as much water as they could. They worked for two days and one night, but it was rushing in too quickly for them to keep up with the flow.

“All we could do was get things up (off the ground),” she said.

As a result of the flooding, Parks’ mother-in-law, her pregnant daughter and 2-year-old granddaughter have all been displaced from their bedrooms downstairs. In addition, Parks said they have to tear up all the flooring and remove the damaged plasterboard.

In the 20 years that they have lived in that house, Parks said they have never had any sort of water runoff issues except some minor runoff during the winter months. Which is why their current problems have caught them by surprise.

“It just shocked everybody,” Parks said.

For Andy Galvins, Parks’ next-door neighbor, the problems began in December 2014.

“My basement began to have some water seepage, and within a week my basement was flooded,” he said.

Galvins and his wife have been living in their home for almost 20 years and like Parks and her husband, he said they have never had any issues with flooding until very recently. If anything, he said it was quite the opposite.

“The corner at 166th (Place Northeast) has always been bone dry,” Galvins said. “So much that no matter how much I would water, I could not keep the grass from drying out and dying off. I now have moss growing there and cannot mow because you sink into the mud.”

It is a similar story for Ana Ulici, who lives on the side of Parks’ home. She has been living in her home for more than two decades and like Parks and Galvins, has never experienced any sort of flooding. But now, several creeks have appeared in her back yard, just like in Parks’ yard.

“It’s all flooded,” she said. “It’s all saturated.”

For now, it has only been Ulici’s back yard that has flooded. The water has not hit inside her home yet as she is located higher on the hill than Galvins and Parks. The three homeowners have not heard of any flooding issues from any other neighbors in their cul-de-sac, but all of those homes are higher on the hill.

SAFETY CONCERNS

In addition to the flooding from the residents’ back yards, the water runoff has leached out onto the sidewalk along the east side of 166th Avenue Northeast — even when it has not been raining.

“This water never stops,” said Charlie Cox, stormwater operations supervisor for the City of Redmond.

He said when it is cold out, the water turns to ice so they have had to come out to de-ice the sidewalk.

The sudden flooding has also raised concerns about possible landslides on the hill, for Parks, Ulici and Galvins.

But Linda DeBoldt, public works director for the City of Redmond, said initial assessments by a city geological tech indicate that the area is not at risk for a landslide.

TAKING A FINANCIAL HIT

Since then, Parks said they have had the concrete floor of their home jackhammered up to install a drainage system, costing $14,000. It would cost an additional $10,000 for a contractor to come in and redo their downstairs. She said they cannot afford this, so her husband has taken time off from work so they can do the work themselves. Parks added that since the water is coming from outside the home, their insurance won’t cover it since they do not have flood insurance.

While the new drainage system has addressed the flooding inside her home, Parks’ back yard has turned into a swamp and now contains a new creek from the water emerging from underground.

Galvins hired a specialist to put in a new drain and seal the foundation in front of his home to protect it from future flooding, which cost him $5,000.

On Tuesday, Parks posted about her and her neighbor’s flooding issues on a Facebook group page for the Education Hill neighborhood. She asked if anyone has had groundwater problems like they have and by Wednesday morning, a number of people responded, voicing similar situations of water damage to their homes. One woman said she has spent more than $30,000 over the years, installing internal and external draining systems and they still have water problems.

WHERE IS IT COMING FROM?

As of right now, no one knows the water’s origins.

“Common sense dictates that there must be failure of the groundwater system for there to be such a drastic change in the environment over such a short period of time,” Galvins said. “That water is not just run off from the rain. It seems to be below ground and leaching out in various places and is easy to see in many places as you walk down the hill.”

The city has tested the water to make sure it is not potable water — drinking water — which would indicate a line leakage or some other system failure the city controls and could address. DeBoldt said they test for elements such as chlorine and fluoride in the water, which would indicate the water had been treated. However, she said, the water does not contain any of these, indicating it is naturally occurring groundwater.

“That had been done multiple times (in the last four or five years),” said Cox about the water runoff in the area.

While the water’s origin is still a mystery, DeBoldt and Cox said there are a number of things that may have caused the flooding.

They said the area could be on top of a perched water table. This means there are different layers of soil underground. One layer could be impermeable and not allow water to flow through, leading to the soil layer above to become saturated, eventually to the point of flooding.

DeBoldt said among the other factors that could explain the increased amount of groundwater surfacing on Parks’ property, there could be possible impacts of nearby construction and development. Construction excavations that disrupt soil could allow water traveling underground to shift course and wind up changing where it may have surfaced in the past, DeBoldt said. Also, more frequent and intense rainfall due to climate change could explain increase amounts of groundwater surfacing.

She said, based on the city’s tests, it does not appear to be a failure in city infrastructure. Because of this, DeBoldt said the city can only offer advice to residents on how to solve their problems and not money as that would be a gift of public funds.