"The beaver" just can't leave river

MAPLE VALLEY — Mike Sipin is the first to admit it. He's a river rat.

You know how every time it floods around here and you see poor saps wading from their front doors with waterlogged boxes, and you wonder: Why do they live there? Why don't they move to a hill?

Well, ask Mike Sipin.

He's a 62-year-old volunteer fireman who has been washed out of homes along the Cedar River five times. Flooding was so regular at his old house, an A-frame near the Maple Valley Highway, that the government finally bought him out and tore down the house rather than help him through another cleanup.

What did he do with the money? He bought a house on the banks of the same river, about three miles south.

On Thursday we stood in what he said was a concrete driveway. At that moment it was a frothing rapids swift enough to knock down his carport. Brown water filled his living room 4 inches deep.

In his backyard, the Cedar River roared like a freeway. Sipin said earlier a '72 Ford pickup had floated past.

Mike, I asked, five times this has happened to you? Ever consider moving?

Nope, he said. Firmly.

"My friends all call me 'the beaver,' " he said. "I can't not live here. The river's in my bones."

Last week it was all up in his stuff, too. Which, when multiplied by the thousands of flooded homes around the region, is a big problem.

"It's probably $50,000 of damage," Sipin guessed. "I'll do what I've always done. Fix it up and get ready for the next one."

Why do we keep doing this?

With rivers like the Cedar, we have two choices. Tame it with dams and levees. Or get out of its way while we let it run free.

The government is not actively trying to channel the Cedar anymore, except as it gets down toward the city of Renton (and flows past the Boeing plant, where it did not flood). Rather than beef up levees, the philosophy upstream has been to buy out flood-prone homes so the Cedar can go where it wants.

Yet, there are hundreds of people who still live on its banks. As long as they stay, they are at the river's mercy.

Most of them don't seem to mind. At one house, where the Cedar had ripped away the entire backyard deck and flushed it downstream, the man who lived there shrugged.

"That's river living," he said. "We'll build a new deck by summer."

At the chronically flooded Rainbow Bend development, King County has bought and torn down every house but one. Good thing, because last week the Cedar jumped over the puny, ailing dike and swamped the neighborhood.

It didn't seem to faze the last guy there. The water was running so high and strong I couldn't reach him to talk to him. But smoke curled from his chimney even as 3-foot-deep rapids coursed against his house.

I didn't meet anyone along the river who said the floods would get them to move.

In fact, some people are expanding their homes or building anew.

King County officials say it's legit to build as long as the floor level is at least 1 foot above the 100-year flood plain (though that standard is getting stricter). Sipin, the river rat, says the building rules combined with the federal flood-insurance program guarantee that the build-flood-rebuild cycle will go on forever.

"If the county says you can build here, and the banks will finance you to build here, is it any surprise that people are building here?" he asked.

Sipin has tripled the size of his home (his additions were not flooded, he noted proudly). He says the perks of river living make it worth the washouts.

Nature gives most of the time. So what if every five or 10 years, it suddenly, viciously, takes?

"People will drive two hours just to camp where I live," he said, tucking a beer into his hip waders.

Besides, city dwellers like me shouldn't be so quick to judge, he said. Risk lives everywhere.

"Say you build a house in a known high-crime neighborhood. Are you saying we don't have to come help you if you get shot?"

A fair point. But the fifth time I got shot? Past time to head for the hills, I'd say.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.