Do Lane County floodway development restrictions help or hurt public safety?

This story was updated at 10:40 a.m. Tuesday

Laurie Wellborn purchased her manufactured home on El Roble Avenue in Goshen after she and her then-husband were laid off in the 2008 recession. She loves the neighborhood and the fact that she owns her home and the lot it's on, which is unusual given her job as a custodian. But she shares that early 1970's single-wide mobile home with three more family members and it's become both cramped and dangerous.

"The floors are falling off. The wiring is not good," Wellborn told the Register-Guard. "I want to make it so (my home is) not falling apart."

Wellborn and her neighbors live in a subdivision of 80 manufactured homes and 40 stick-built homes off of Seavey Loop Road. Many of the residents live in mobile homes built in the ‘70s and would like to replace them, but this has proven challenging because of the land-use rules facing the neighborhood, which is located in a floodway.

The facts of this neighborhood's case are unique, but conflicts like these between preventing urban sprawl and preserving nature versus encouraging more housing and protecting the rights of landowners are common in Oregon land use.

FEMA floodway regulations

In a 100-year flood — defined as a flood that has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year — the floodway is the area that becomes the "principal path" of a river, explained Amanda Ferguson, who previously worked as a floodplain manager and now works for the University of Oregon's Institute for Policy Research and Engagement.

"This is where the highest velocity area of the river will be during a flood," Ferguson said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the government agency responsible for preparing and responding to natural disasters, maintains a map of floodways in the country.

Everyone who lives in a floodway and has a mortgage must buy flood insurance, and many people who don't have a mortgage still choose to buy insurance. Cities and counties across the country in places where there's flood risk establish rules restricting flood-zone development. The stricter these rules, the less the government's constituents have to pay for flood insurance.

Local governments have the authority to weigh how much flood development risk they're willing to take on. In Cottage Grove, where Ferguson said there's a "very tiny floodway," city council "felt pretty strongly that they could prohibit more development in the floodway."

Meanwhile, in Eugene, where the Amazon Creek's floodway spills onto dozens of lots, the Eugene City Council established more lenient rules. Buildings can be expanded, and new ones can be built, so long as an engineer provides a "no-rise" analysis certifying that the development won't increase the water level in a flood, Eugene Permitting & Floodplain Manager Jack Blackham told the Register-Guard.

The Lane County Board of Commissioners is responsible for writing the flood development code for the parts of the county outside cities. In 2019 and 2020, commissioners went through a process to strengthen these rules, citing desires to protect people and their property from flooding and to protect riverways, especially as people rebuilt following the Holiday Farm Fire.

Commissioners landed somewhere between the policies in Eugene and Cottage Grove. The county made it illegal to build new structures in the floodway in unincorporated Lane County and made it so existing structures could only be replaced with ones of the same "footprint," although they did not explicitly define the word footprint at the time.

In the time since the new rules went into effect, county staff has been using a dictionary definition of "footprint" and only allowing replacement construction in the floodway if it matches the exact length, width and orientation of a previous building.

Following complaints that this was overly restrictive, county commissioners directed staff to begin the process of redefining the word "footprint" at an October 2021 meeting. "I'd like to have those issues be brought to the planning commission rather than straight to the board to wordsmith," then-Commissioner Jay Bozievich said at the meeting.

When your neighborhood is in a floodway

The most active people in trying to get the county to loosen that definition have been the residents of the Seavey Loop subdivision. People in the neighborhood told the Register-Guard they believe the requirement that replacement homes perfectly match the size of old ones makes replacement unrealistic.

"Nothing that's being sold right now matches our footprints," Wellborn said. "It's very hard to find anything to replace a single-wide."

According to county staff's memo on the issue, staff considered allowing up to a 50% increase in a structure's footprint increase because of this concern. At a planning commission public hearing, residents of the Mt. Pisgah neighborhood endorsed this allowance and said it would make it easier to replace their homes and revitalize their neighborhood.

"I've lived there now for about 20-some years and I've watched this area just go downhill," Vern Campbell told the planning commissioners. "Nobody's been able to replace their homes and it's starting to look like trailer trash."

What does it mean for the government to protect public safety?

Members of LandWatch Lane County, an environmental non-profit with the stated goal of stopping sprawl, protecting natural areas and saving farmlands in unincorporated Lane County, also spoke at the hearing and argued that allowing larger structures in the floodway would worsen conditions in a flood.

"Floodway development poses an extreme hazard to the environment," Jim Babson, a member of LandWatch Lane County's board, told planning commissioners. "50% bigger structures means 50% more pollution floating downstream in the event of a major flood."

In their non-binding recommendation to the county commissioners, the planning commission voted 4-3 to go with the stricter recommendation. In their proposed code, which LandWatch endorsed, the definition of a footprint is loosened so that a structure can be replaced with one of different dimensions or orientation, but only if its square footage is the same size or smaller.

The majority said that while they were less popular, nearby manufactured home retailers, do sell properties under the 1,012 square foot average in the neighborhood, and expressed concern that allowing larger homes would put more people in harm's way in a flood.

"I think it's foolish to do anything to encourage more habitation in a floodway," said Commissioner Charlcie Kaylor. "We're kicking the can down the road by allowing people to still live there, and I think the government ought to pay these people what they need to move away."

But the residents who spoke to the Register-Guard felt that not allowing the increase put them and the environment in more danger.

"They're all older homes. They're horrible as far as the ecological impact if we do have a flood," Wellborn said. "They have formaldehyde. They have lead in the paint. We have asbestos in the flooring or in the walls."

Ferguson said that FEMA doesn't take into account the age of a home when assessing flood risk, because there are some materials in newer homes, such as fiberglass, that are safe while part of a home but become dangerous if they enter a river.

For the people who lived in the neighborhood, they said the everyday risk of living in homes with these chemicals and that were built before 1976 (when the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development began regulating manufactured homes for safety standards), outweighed the risk posed by a potential future flood.

"They weren't built to today's code," said Jim Sullivan, who lives in the neighborhood. "They have aluminum wire in them. It's a fire hazard."

While county staff found manufactured homes for sale that were small enough to allow replacements that don't expand the current footprint, residents told the Register-Guard that they felt not allowing a size increase remained unrealistic.

They said some neighbors were adding RVs to their lots to have extra living space, and those RVs would fare worse than the homes in a flood. They also worried the replacement cost would deter their neighbors from replacing if they don't have the added incentive of a larger home.

John Webster, Lane County Building Program Manager, told the Register-Guard that building permits for replacing a manufactured home with another one typically cost about $1,200. Because the homes are in a floodway, a resident would also have to also buy a floodway development permit from the county for $3,183.84 and a no-rise analysis. The Register-Guard wasn't able to find a quote for this analysis in time for publication.

"We're blocked on all sides from trying to put livable houses in here," Wellborn said. "The land here isn't worth that much to just dump a whole bunch of money where you're not going to even have enough living space for your family."

Wellborn said she's planning to replace her manufactured home with a two-story stick-built one instead of expanding her footprint, which is allowed. But buying a larger, single-story, manufactured home is more affordable and she maintains that her neighbors should have that option.

What is the government's role?

The debate over floodway restrictions carried with them a question about the role of government. For many floodway residents, they said the restrictions on their home size felt like government overreach.

"Government needs to back off," Sherrlyn Bjorkgren, a resident of the neighborhood, told the Register-Guard. "Give us information, tell us the dangers, and let us decide. We're adults."

"It's kind of like putting up safety fences everywhere that there's something beautiful, just to keep someone from falling off or jumping," added Welborn.

Robert Emmons, president of LandWatch Lane County, told the Register-Guard that in LandWatch's view, the floodway rules against expansion protect residents from themselves, but also from each other and protect the government from liability.

"Private property rights always came with public responsibilities," he said. "Whatever happens on your property in a floodway, very soon may affect the person downstream from you. So we all have a certain public responsibility, and that's why regulation occurs."

"When that next flood comes along … and that property of (Bjorkgren's) gets soaked to the point where it's not livable or floats downstream, I wouldn't be surprised to find her seeking help from whatever government she's been criticizing."

Bjorkgren told the Register-Guard that she wouldn't need government help in that situation because she has flood and homeowner's insurance. Other neighborhood residents told the Register-Guard they would get insurance if the government made it easier for them to get newer homes.

"Insurance companies won't finance them unless you tear all (the hazardous materials) out," Campbell said. "If you were gonna walk through here and find out the year of every one of these houses, I would bet you there's only about three or four of them in here that you could finance because they're all older than 1977."

After two public hearings on the floodway code, Lane County Commissioners voted 3-2 to tentatively advance a recommendation that would allow homes, but not other structures, in unincorporated Lane County floodways to increase in size by up to 50%, with the commission majority stressing a desire to not shrink the county's housing supply and to protect private property rights.

"I really struggle with limiting the size of someone's house," Commissioner Ryan Ceniga said. "If you're looking at a 1,000-square foot mobile home floating down the river versus a 1,500-square foot, I don't know if you're going to notice much of a difference."

Commissioners Laurie Trieger and Heather Buch dissented, reiterating concerns about the danger of living in a floodway. "My brother is in California and they're having massive water events down there," Buch said. "Building in a floodway is inherently dangerous and very risky."

The commissioners are scheduled to hold a third public hearing, and possibly a final vote, on these floodway rules Tuesday, March 12.

Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached over email at atorres@registerguard.com or on X @alanfryetorres.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Mt. Pisgah neighbors ask county to reconsider floodway rules