A group of Evergreen homeowners wanting to stabilize a bluff off Whitefish Stage Road seem to be back at square one after the Flathead County commissioners pulled the plug on their four-year effort to get federal money to stabilize a section of the bluff that collapsed in 2010.

With a previous go-ahead from the commissioners, the homeowners had worked successfully to get a $400,000 slope stabilization mitigation grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, using the county as the required subgrantee or sponsoring government agency.

The Flathead County Office of Emergency Services facilitated the process and the homeowners hired a grantwriter to put together a plan to stabilize the property that involves six lots between Whitefish Stage Road and the Village Greens development.

FEMA approved the grant, agreeing to put in $298,000, with the landowners covering a 25 percent match of $102,000.

Then on March 26, commissioners Gary Krueger and Cal Scott abruptly voted to terminate the grant process.

Commissioner Pam Holmquist was absent that day, but all three commissioners later expressed concern about the county’s liability if the slope work were to fail.

“I’ve had ongoing liability concerns,” said Krueger, who voted against accepting the grant last October. At that point Holmquist and Scott voted to keep the process moving forward.

“We were working through the process,” Holmquist said. “Sometimes things change.”

The homeowners now have retained legal counsel as they figure out what to do next.

“There’s a strong possibility of litigation,” said Chuck Wilhoit, a former president of the Village Greens Homeowners Association who now lives in Somers. “I don’t think with all that’s at stake that these homeowners will leave this alone.

“I feel strongly that all that was expected of the county was to be a pass-through for the money,” Wilhoit continued. “So when they start talking about precedents and liabilities, I think the potential [for the county having liability] is much greater if they pull out from the process and some of those houses end up in the [Village Greens] pond.”

Although the property lies within the jurisdiction of both the county and city of Kalispell, the city was not involved in the grant application process.

The federal grant is not transferable from the county to the city, which leaves the group of very frustrated property owners wondering how to proceed.

“I don’t see any way to reassign” the grant, said Kent Atwood, state hazard mitigation officer with the Montana Department of Emergency Services.

Atwood said federal regulations for FEMA mitigation grants require the asking jurisdiction to have an approved predisaster mitigation plan. The county has such a plan and Kalispell also formally adopted the plan by resolution.

“They [Kalispell] could have been eligible” to apply for the grant, “but they chose not to be part of the application,” Atwood said.

Susan Storfa, who lives on the bluff near an area that slid in 2010, helped get the ball rolling on securing the FEMA grant. She said she’s very upset with the commissioners’ decision.

“They never told us why they denied it,” she said. “Our money is absolutely gone ... the county had agreed to do it. I never dreamed they’d pull this.”

The 2010 landslide took out about 20 feet of a backyard. At the time, Evergreen Fire Rescue Chief Craig Williams called the slide “pretty expansive” and said “it’s up to Mother Nature at this point to decide whether or not to stop it.”

Storfa rallied her neighbors and people living below the bluff in Village Greens, and by late 2011 the grant pursuit was underway.

Scott Gearhart lives in a relatively new townhome near the bluff and said he bought his home under the assumption the grant was going forward. He, too, is frustrated at the commissioners’ decision.

“Why get this far and back out of it?” he asked.

Gearhart and Wilhoit asked the commissioners to wait 30 days before sending a formal letter declining the grant to the state Department of Emergency Services to allow the homeowners time to pursue other options. Once the letter is received by the state agency, the FEMA grant will be void.

Although Commissioner Scott told the neighbors he was willing to wait the 30 days, Holmquist said she couldn’t say yet when the letter would be sent. Krueger also didn’t commit to waiting 30 days.

So far the commissioners have been unwilling to discuss other options, such as a waiver of subrogation or hold-harmless agreement that would not make the county liable for any future slide damage, Gearhart said.

“It’s unfortunate to put the county and taxpayers at risk,” he continued. “What’s the [county] liability now, when we as citizens attempted to mitigate this?”

Gearhart had been scheduled to further discuss the slope stabilization project with the commissioners at 10:30 a.m. on April 17, but he learned Thursday he had been bounced from the commissioners’ agenda. Holmquist phoned Gearhart to say there was no need to come in because, in her words, “the issue is dead.”

Gearhart said the commissioners’ refusal to consider any other options is mind-boggling to him.

He and other neighbors can speak during a public comment session at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, but it’s only a 15-minute segment of the commissioners’ agenda.

Atwood inspected the bluff several years ago, and suggested at the time that the county consider a buy-out and convert the property to open space. The process is similar to flood-prone areas where the government purchases homes and then maintains open space that can never be built upon.

“But folks there [in Flathead County] didn’t want to pursue that,” Atwood said.

“We can’t force the subgrantee [Flathead County] to do anything,” he said. “Part of our job is to advertise and say ‘Hey, we might be able to mitigate that natural hazard.’ We defer to the local jurisdiction. We’re just the conduit, the pass-through.”

Scott said the Whitefish Stage slope problem is one of “scores of sites” in the county with similar problems and he considers this a precedent-setting case.

“How far do you go in protecting people from themselves?” Scott said.

Scott added, however, that he does hope the county can seek some kind of resolution with the slope stabilization project.

Storfa believes the city has some responsibility, too, in stabilizing the slope. They approved the annexation of the Granary Ridge townhouses, which she and other neighbors claim are too close to the crest of the hill.

Slumping has been an ongoing problem in that area for years, Wilhoit said. The Village Greens Homeowners Association spent $30,000 to build earthen dams following a slide about six or seven years ago, but the 2010 slide overran those dams. Ongoing erosion has added sediment to the stormwater retention pond below the bluff, though the city did some work several years ago to fix the storm drain and divert water from the pond, he added.

The slope stabilization work outlined in the grant would build safer slopes and create adequate drainage.

The grant application pointed out that if unabated, the graduate erosion of the slope could cause catastrophic damage within a number of years.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.