“Yes.”
“The retired Mercer?”
“I prefer selectively employed.”
He laughed.
“What did you break?”
“Nothing.”
“That answer worries me more.”
“Someone demolished part of permit SWR-17-0418.”
Silence.
“Your Cedar Ridge structure?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“The Cedar Ridge HOA.”
Another silence.
Then:
“They did what?”
That question became the theme of the week.
I should explain how we got there.
I bought Parcel 7A in 2014.
Fourteen acres.
Unincorporated county land.
No HOA.
No architectural committee.
No private covenant dictating mailbox colors.
I bought it partly because of that.
After almost three decades reviewing subdivisions for government agencies, I knew exactly what I did not want in retirement.
I did not want a committee debating my shed.
I did not want annual disputes over fence stain.
I did not want to sit through three-hour meetings because someone parked a camper in the wrong orientation.
I wanted land.
Trees.
A creek.
A workshop.
And enough distance between my porch and my nearest neighbor that nobody cared what color my mailbox was.
Parcel 7A sat above Cedar Ridge.
The subdivision had been developed in phases beginning in the late 1990s.
The earliest engineering reports were mediocre.
Not fraudulent.
Just optimistic.
Developers often design drainage to minimum standards because minimum standards are cheaper.
Cedar Ridge’s eastern section occupied what old topographic maps showed as a shallow natural runoff bowl.
Not officially designated floodplain.
But low.
Before development, stormwater spread through grass and hardwood understory.
After development, roofs and pavement accelerated it.
The original detention ponds handled ordinary design storms.
Large, slow-duration rainfall was another matter.
In September 2016, thirteen inches of rain fell across the county in less than four days.
Cedar Ridge did not catastrophically flood.
But six basements took water.
Two streets became impassable.
The clubhouse parking lot went under.
Frank Devereaux’s finished basement received eighteen inches.
I knew Frank only slightly then.
Retired fire captain.
Direct man.
Good beard.
He saw me walking the drainage line after the storm and asked:
“You county?”
“Retired.”
“That means you know things without having to pretend you care about politics.”
“Sometimes.”
He showed me his basement.
Furniture stacked outside.
Drywall cut away.
His daughter carrying wet photo albums.
“What happened?”
I asked.
“Water came over the curb and through the walkout.”
I spent several days studying the watershed.
No one hired me.
I was curious.
The upper ridge produced more runoff than the subdivision plans had modeled.
A natural saddle on my property offered a solution.
Not huge.
Not complicated.
A low detention berm across the creek with a controlled outlet.
During ordinary flow, nearly invisible hydrologically.
During storms, it would temporarily store and spread runoff over my own acreage before releasing it.
I had the space.
I understood the engineering.
And I had watched a young couple three houses below Frank carry a ruined crib into a dumpster.
So I designed it.
Because I could.
The permitting process took six months.
Soils study.
Hydrologic model.
Downstream-impact analysis.
Environmental review.
County grading approval.
State water-resources authorization.
I was retired by then, which mattered.
I did not approve my own design.
A state engineer named Ruth Jensen reviewed it.
County engineer Curtis Lynn reviewed drainage impacts.
I signed as owner and engineer of record.
Construction began in April 2017.
The finished berm stood eight feet at its highest point.
Broad.
Grassed.
Armored emergency spillway.
Buried outlet.
No picturesque lake.
Most days it looked like a grassy rise.
During major rain, it became useful.
The first serious test came in 2018.
Five inches over two days.