LAKE SUTHERLAND — Residents around this rain-risen lake are going through hell for high water.
Several of them asked Clallam County commissioners on Tuesday to help stop the flooding that has drowned their docks, overtopped their septic systems and backed up into their basements.
Commissioners will reconvene at 2:30 p.m. Thursday to continue to search for a solution.
Retired Port Angeles pharmacist Jim Cammack, 401 Maple Grove Road, said his dock has disappeared below the water and its walkway has washed away.
Darlene Jones, 280 Longfellow Road, said she can’t pump her cellar dry because it lies lower than the swollen level of the lake.
Jim Ciaciuch of Port Angeles, a summer resident on Lake Sutherland, thought damage to homes, boat houses and docks might total $1 million among its more than 300 property owners.
He estimated he lost $50,000 to $70,000 when his boat house and 80 feet of his dock were battered by debris and swamped.
Above normal levels
Residents agreed that Lake Sutherland has risen far above its normal levels. Even before wet weather set in, the water was high.
This week’s three dry days haven’t made it go down, they added.
“Something is different this year,” Jones said. “This is not the way it’s always been.”
That “something” might range from global warming to super-saturation from a month of continual rainfall, said Commissioner Mike Doherty, D-Port Angeles. His district includes the lake.
Moreover, a creek leading from the lake has become clogged by snags and silt, Doherty said, and the swamp into which the creek flows is filling with mud.
