Flooding land/house - Need help

[Brian Holshouser]

I am sorry if this is not the right place for this. It may fall under a general contracting forum.

So here’s the story, a few years back my Mother built a beautiful dream house down the hill a bit from us in a really beautiful location on 5 acres with lots of trees surrounding the area. She had the flood planes checked and everything and for about 3 years she had no issues with flooding whatsoever, even after heavy rains poured during the construction. There is a creek that runs a few months out of the year just east of her house. Her neighbor to the south dammed it up about a decade ago and several people have long since moved into the area so when the creek began to run less it was not much of a surprise.

In 2018 the owners of the 80 acre lot south of her began removing several dozens/hundreds of trees, many of them being ceders. The first moderate rain that fell in early 2019 resulted in my Mother’s creeks overflowing and her yard began to fill with water around her house.

We contacted the owners of the property to the south (where the water flows from) and they acted as if the flooding was no big deal and the tree removal had nothing to do with extra water flow. They continued the removal of hundreds of trees and now my Mother’s house, road and yard has suffered greatly from the massive trenches of water.

The water tends to pour in incredibly fast about an hour after a rain, so fast that it does not have time to flow through the creek beds and eventually into the river a mile up stream. I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that the neighbors have removed hundreds of trees from their land where the water was once greatly absorbed and mitigated flow. Now it floods their pond quickly and then the land between the pond and my mom’s and pours out onto my Mother’s land for an hour or two before it begins to recede to normal flow.

What action and options can be taken here? I want to do everything I can to make this right for my mother, especially since this is her dream home and it’s an event that seems like there should be a creative solution. She doesn’t have a ton of capital saved up so digging out massive trenches through her woods seems like it would be too expensive. Should she take legal action? Who does she need to call?

Thanks in advance!