North, East, West, South—No Matter Where You, Flood Waters Will Rise

Dee Marks stood in the middle of her front yard, in her waders. In the middle of the quiet Miner's Ravine Lane, several of Marks' neighbors stood and looked at their own houses. None, however, were as saturated as Marks' house, which floundered in three feet of water. Earlier, sometime around 5:00 a.m., Miner's Creek spilled over its bank and became a rushing torrent headed directly into Marks' garage.

"We expected the big one, the one that they were predicting on the television weather to hit Friday night," sighed Marks. "But it didn't happen. My son advised me to leave the garage door open, just in case, because it was still raining. He had a hunch that the worst wasn't over."

The worst wasn't over. With the massive rain burst that hit at 3:30 a.m, and which dropped over two inches of rain across Granite Bay, Miner's Ravine Creek swelled and became a river rushing through what has become a turbulent neighborhood. Dee Marks' house, which she has owned since 1974, has flooded four times since 1974.

The first flood came in 1983, when the Hidden Valley Dam broke. Just a few shorts months after she had effected repairs from the earlier drenching, in 1986, the Creek jumped its banks again and flooded the neighborhood—that time because of a small dam in Pleasant Valley. There was not much that could be done in January, 1995. The water came so fast and so hard that no amount of preparation could have stopped the flooding that recked havoc all across Sacramento County.

After the 1995 flood, Dee Marks was forced to leave her home again, this time for 18 months, while construction and remodeling crews repaired the damage to her house, and to her yard. In the process of rebuilding, Marks' shored up the south side of her property, the side bordered by Miner's Ravine Creek. Bulldozers shoved sand and big blocks of concrete to create a wall between the creek and Mark's house.

But the strategy didn't work, because no one suspected that the cause of the flooding in 1997 would come from north of her property. Originally, the land north of the neighborhood was designated as a "no-build" zone by Placer County officials. But somewhere in the process of wanting more money from new development and an increased tax base from the new housing projects, the county allowed construction, and now Marks faults that development for her flooding.

She had done everything that she could to protect her home from the sometimes violent creek, but this time the water came from higher ground, through the "back door"—the development north of her property. Rushing down the lane like a river, the water began to compromise the barrier that she had constructed to the south. Eventually, the water eroded the work and allowed the creek to commandeer its way onto Marks property, once again.

Her surrounding neighbors raised the level of their houses, or have torn down their houses to build new living quarters on higher ground upon their property. The strategy worked for some, but not for all. For Marks, being single, the expense of rebuilding was too great. She can't afford to raise her house the way many of her neighbors have done. And her house sits on the lowest elevation of the neighborhood, so it would cost a bit more to raise her house to a safer elevation.

Next to her house, the normally amicable creek, rushed so fast and so furiously that Marks often had to raise her voice just be heard.

"They don't talk much about flooding in our area," said Marks. "They've [Placer County officials] been pretty successful in keeping everything quiet. But we flood, a lot. We get an awful lot of flooding."

With the work done on the two dams that broke during the previous flood in the 1980's, Marks and her neighbors were sure that everything was secured, and that, though they may flood, the severity would not be as great. "But then, what is severe," she said. "This much water or that much water—I still have the repairs to worry about."

Marks had just put in new carpet from the flooding that occurred in 1995, and now she has to do it all over again.

If there was one bright spot to the morning when the water rushed through Marks' house, it was the emergence of Queenie, a cream colored feline described by Marks as a prissy, aristocratic cat who managed to find her way onto the roof of the house. "Oh my gosh," blurted Marks. "There she is. She's all right. I haven't seen her two days. I've been so worried. Gosh, does she look mad." Queenie, safe for the moment on higher ground, tucked herself under a deep eave of the roof and began to clean the mud from her paws and belly.

Dee Marks breathed a sigh of relief at the safety of her cat, but the beloved pet was a minor comfort. "It won't take her as long to clean herself as it will take me to make this house livable, again." Marks is probably right. After going through the process of collecting on her flood insurance, she won't be ready to move back into a dry house until mid-summer.