When flood waters rise, Marty Bumstead’s River Street apartment building always winds up on television.

Bumstead’s downtown five-plex is on the spot where evening news camera crews, and plenty of local onlookers, stop to watch the Snoqualmie River rise.

“It’s one of the first to get hit by floods,” Bumstead said.

The building has survived four major floods since 1990. Each time, Bumstead has to pick up the pieces, tearing out drywall and cleaning up the mess.

But now, Bumstead figures he and his tenants suffered through their last disaster as of January. Thanks to a state and federal grant program for home elevations, and after a two year wait, Bumstead’s living quarters are five feet off the ground this week.

“I’m hoping, for my tenants’ sake, that it was my last flood,” he said. “I’m happy for them. They can sit there and watch the water flow.”

Damaged in the 2006 flood, Bumstead had to wait more than two years before his elevation project got under way. It took another big flood in January to kick-start the process.

The River Street residence is one thirteen Snoqualmie homes being elevated this fall with help from federal dollars. More grants are in the process of raising dozens more, but the wait is long, and not all homeowners who apply get grants.

In the queue

Rob Flaner, a federal grant consultant for the city, was up to his eyeballs in paperwork last week as he prepared the final grant submissions to the state to raise homes damaged in the January 2009 flood.

Flaner received applications to raise 87 homes. There is only enough money, about $3 million, in the two grants he’s handling to elevate 30 homes. The rest will have to wait for another round.

Elevating a home costs anywhere from a low of $95,000 to a high of nearly $200,000. It costs more to raise homes with basements, or those sitting on a concrete slab. Slab-built homes need extra reinforcement to be elevated, while federal authorities require basements of elevated homes to be demolished. Otherwise, they would fill with water.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants pay for 75 percent of home elevations costs. The rest is split equally by the homeowner and the city. FEMA allows no cost overruns in its grants — any extra cost is the burden of the homeowner.

Choosing which homes will be elevated is based a complex mathematical model. FEMA requires that an elevation pay for itself within a 30-year time period — the cost to elevate it must be equal or less than the predicted damage the home might take from floods in that time frame.

Homeowners must also provide the required data, including elevation statements, to take part.

Some home-raising projects will save far more than just the cost of elevation. That savings allows Flaner to spread the grant funds around to help homes that don’t see the full 100 percent savings over 30 years.

Flooding is so severe in Snoqualmie than any reduction in risk is cost effective, Flaner said.

“There’s more than 650 structures in the floodplain,” he said. “The city has been whittling away at this flood risk through grant programs.” He figures about 30 percent of risky properties have been addressed though elevations, but added that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Waiting game

Permanently protecting a home takes a long time. Before any home goes up, paperwork must complete a back-and-forth shuffle between state, federal and local officials.

State and federal authorities both have up to 12 months to sign off on the grant proposal. Once approved, the city must draft an agreement with the state, and get the state’s approval. Then, each homeowner must enter an agreement with the city, deposit funds into an account, obtain bids, and have the bid be approved by the city before construction can begin.

“It’s definitely a very complicated and frustrating program to get through,” said Snoqualmie Mayor Matt Larson. “It was very frustrating after the 2006 flood.”

Like the Bumstead home, a number of homes hit in 2006 were scheduled to be raised, but the process dragged by and those homes were hit by the 2009 flood, too.

If there was any silver lining to the January flood, Larson said, it was that the disaster spurred grant authorities to move faster in elevating homes above danger.

Homes have to suffer repetitive damage to qualify for elevation grants. The 2009 flood put more homes into the pipeline to be raised.

A FEMA report on 28 homes raised in the last two decades showed that all of those homes recouped the cost of elevation in the 2006 flood alone, saving $1.4 million in damages.

“They’re not just throwing money down a black hole,” Larson said. “This gets people out of harm’s way.”

In the end, elevations offer a big reward.

“It takes the patience of Job to get through it,” Larson said. “But the payoff is big. It’s worth the wait.”

The process seems to be speeding up. The city approved grant contracts to elevate homes damaged in 2007 flooding at its Sept. 14 council meeting. That would mean a wait of less than two years — better than the 2006 process.

Despite the wait, elevation is more appealing than clearing flood-prone neighborhoods.

“We’d rather elevate than do buyouts and have big empty spaces downtown,” said Gwynn Berry, planning technician with the city of Snoqualmie.

No buyout plans are currently in the works by the city, although King County is considering buying out the mobile home park at Meadowbrook.

More homes

For Rich Clark, president of Valley-based Emerald Pacific Development, elevating the Bumstead building posed a challenge.

The former medical office building was added on several times and did not have a uniform foundation. Still, Clark had the job done in standard time, raising it up on steel I-beams and wood cribbing. Residents accessed their homes through temporary stairs during the three-day lift process.

Clark praised the city for its role. Snoqualmie fronts the costs of design and administration, making it easier for homeowners, who can only make three draws from the FEMA grant during the entire project.

It takes Clark about a month to raise an average home. This fall, Clark is raising two homes and bidding for more.

“It’s flood season,” Clark said. “Everybody’s anxious before the next flood comes.”