BI groups hold walk and talk to discuss king tide effects

A host of Bainbridge environmental organizations led a walk along the Eagle Harbor waterfront Dec. 8 to view the effects of one of the largest king tides in state history and to discuss the threat of sea level rise.

Flooding and climate-change exacerbated high tide events threaten both private and public infrastructure on BI, as well as environmental health, but finding momentum to address the issue has been a challenge, advocates explained.

“It’s not just the structure issues, it’s not just the road issues. There’s a whole suite of things that build, and add up, in considering what we’re going to do about this on Bainbridge Island,” said Lara Hansen, chief scientist and executive director of EcoAdapt. “And as the [Hyla] students pointed out, this is something that’s going to go on for a very long time.”

Around 35 people — students and teachers from Hyla High School, city officials, residents from BI and North Kitsap and personnel from the Washington State Ferries — attended the morning walk, which coincided with the zenith of the Dec. 8 king tide of about 12.3 feet at 8:30 a.m.

Program leaders from Sustainable Bainbridge led the group on a walk along the Waterfront Trail through Waypoint Woods, then to the shoreline next to the Eagle Harbor condominiums complex by special invitation. Afterward, they passed the baton to WSF staff for a tour through the Eagle Harbor Maintenance Facility.

Water was inescapable that morning. Rain poured from the clouds, forming puddles on the trail’s packed duff, and seawater lapped at the uppermost rocks of the bulkhead just feet away. The mouth of Ravine Creek was swollen and green, reaching the branches of bankside trees. Where the trail met the shore, even the narrow strip of rocky public beach had vanished, subsumed by the tide, and a piecemeal log boom installed by the condo complex bobbed in the waves.

“It’s not only the water coming in. It’s the erosion of the shoreline, which will bring the water closer even sooner,” said Hansen.

The effects of sea level rise coupled with aging infrastructure are already being felt by waterfront residents and operations around the island.

Rising tides have fully submerged some electrical cable boxes installed in the 1980s at the EHMF, said Tim Clancy, operations manager at the facility. In 2022, a major king tide event submerged roads and buildings around the island, including a workshop at the EHMF. The saltwater damaged the metal floors, and it took two years to remove all the rust.

“This [black floor] was bright orange for about a year. You can still see some of the residue,” said Clancy.

Jeannette Franks, founder of Weed Warriors and resident of Eagle Harbor condominiums, has been advocating for more action from the building’s board of directors for years, she said. The 2022 king tide event nearly flooded the ground-level units at the condo complex, alarming residents, she recalled. The building’s homeowners association installed logs and native plants to stabilize the shoreline, but Franks worried it won’t be enough.

“The residents and the board, most of them are very well aware of [the need for a bulkhead], but it’s a very slow, challenging process, and expensive […] We have assessments, we have a budget, and they have been putting away more money to address this issue, but nobody knows exactly what the deadline is and what the cost is going to be. It’s unpredictable, but it’s coming sooner than I think a lot of people expect,” said Franks. “One of the things that scares people is how much money it’s going to cost, but it’s going to cost a lot more money if it comes up to the ground level. I mean, we have flood insurance now, as an entity, the board gets it, but at some point we won’t be able to get insurance.”

It’s not just the Eagle Harbor complex, Hansen added. Some homes in Rolling Bay and on the sand spit at the north end of the island are very vulnerable to sea level rise, and some may already have compromised septic systems, she said. The city’s wastewater treatment center may also be threatened, she said.

Jacqui Beresford, an 11th-grade student at Hyla, noted that any methods to address sea level rise should include considerations for the benefit of island ecosystems.

“There’s a lot of talk about what it’s going to do for us, but there’s also huge ecological impacts to sea level rise. Coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion has a huge impact on many ecosystems. There’s a lot of ways to mitigate this problem, but how do we do that in a way that doesn’t go destroying other ecosystems? How do we build sustainable infrastructure that doesn’t destroy our environment?” said Beresford. “We need to start looking at what we have, rather than what else we can add on to it. How we can fix this without creating more problems is one of the biggest things.”

Event attendees step carefully over logs placed along the shoreline of Eagle Harbor condominiums as a buffer for wave action, avoiding the high water from the king tide.

Tim Clancy, operations manager at Eagle Harbor Maintenance Facility, recounts a king tide flooding incident at the facility in 2022 that covered the entire ground floor of the structure with several inches of water.