By: Muriel Lawty and Annie Fanning

In 2011, when I moved into the neighborhood, I had no idea it had a name, and a charming little creek running through it that is part of the Thornton Creek watershed. And I didn’t realize this creek just down the street from where I live was very prone to flooding. 

The Little Brook neighborhood, located between 30th Ave NE and Lake City Way and NE 145th St and either NE 127th or NE 135th (depending on which map you use), is “officially” part of the Olympic Hills neighborhood.  Historically underserved with public housing, low rent apartment buildings and small multiplexes – it was developed without much regard for the natural environment.  Residents, were primarily low income renters, disabled, elderly, and/or non-English speaking immigrants.  Over time it has changed with the addition of Little Brook Park, new market rent apartment buildings, condominiums, townhome developments, rehabbing of existing buildings and the addition of some sidewalks.

The stretch of the creek, impacted the most by this, runs through the neighborhood north to south from NE 145th Street to NE 137th Street, daylighting occasionally between buildings before entering pipes. Our Little Brook Park is the only place it is open to the public, making it a pleasant place to relax and play. It doesn’t flood in the park, but there are several other places where it overflows onto private property and into homes.

Very little has been done to restore the creek or mitigate the flooding – until 2022 when Thornton Creek Alliance applied for a grant through King County Flood Control (https://kingcountyfloodcontrol.org/grant-programs-funding/) to do a modeling study of the creek so the section flowing through the Little Brook Neighborhood can be added to the FEMA Flood Impact Risk Map (FIRM) [https://www.fema.gov/flood-maps/tools-resources/risk-map]. This will potentially enable property owners to get flood insurance and to get help with the costly impact of flooding.

I learned that this quiet little creek floods from time to time through volunteering in the neighborhood and taking a tour of the creek, led by Jonathan Frodge, working for SPU  as a storm water scientist and limnologist, who is now retired and a fellow TCA Board member.  I didn’t have to wait long before I saw flooding for myself.

On December 20,2019 my neighbors knocked – loudly! – on my door and told me to come see. Taking pictures from the culvert at NE 137th St, this is what we saw: 

The creek was backed up at the culvert, flooding into their backyard and part of a converted garage space in their home. And upstream an apartment building’s dumpster was floating down the creek

Then on December 21, 2020 this happened:

This time the upstream dumpster was held back by a berm the apartment owner had built but the storm was worse, causing storm drains to back flow and a relief valve across the street from the culvert to become a fountain.

After a reprieve, flooding returned at night on January 2, 2022 – this was at night and with leftover snow and ice so I chose not to go out into that storm!  Then at 9:31 AM, Christmas Eve 2022 my neighbor sent a text with this: 

I called the Seattle Public Utilities’ Operations Response Center at 206.386.1800 and then went out to document the event. This is what I saw – flooding that went into the small home by the creek and upstream, apartment residents dealing with cars inundated with flood water:

I presented pictures of Little Brook Creek acting up to our TCA Board; afterward fellow board member Annie Fanning encouraged me to write about it. To help with this I took her on a tour of the area. This map of our tour is one our TCA Flood Grant Team used with our grant application:

We started our walking tour of Little Brook Creek at NE 137th Street – 3 lots east of 32nd Ave NE and ended at NE 145th St and 27th Ave NE where it first daylights in Seattle. A tributary of Thornton Creek, Little Brook Creek starts in Shoreline, then crosses into Seattle at NE 145th St and flows south — mainly through pipes and culverts but also above ground in several places, many directly adjacent to apartment buildings. The creek passes through a small natural area along the edge of Little Brook Park and at NE 125th St enters a storm water detention pond created by the City in 1997. From there, Little Brook runs for several blocks through a steep ravine before joining the North Branch of Thornton Creek at NE 113rd St.

Due to years of haphazard urban planning and overbuilding in the floodplain, Little Brook Creek has the poorest health of any part of our creek system, such as high E coli counts.. We know this because TCA has been sampling the water at three locations along Little Brook to test for E. coli and other contaminants since 2018. Our attention wasn’t focused directly on the flooding problem until our Flood Grant Team (TCA Board members Jonathan Frodge, Muriel Lawty, Jeff Laufle, Jessica Yellin and Gary Olson) got to work. This study will help identify the problem areas so we can come with potential solutions.

If you see flooding or ponding, a blocked culvert or creek, or a suspicious spill of any kind, call Seattle Public Utilities’ Operations Response Center at (206) 386-1800. When you call, be prepared to provide the street address of the problem and general information about the issue.