A North Whidbey couple accused by the state Department of Ecology of trying to drain a wetland without the proper permit was shocked last week to be fined $120,000 for non-compliance with an order to fill in drainage ditches.

“We just got absolutely blindsided by this,” said Chris Whiteman, who owns the property on Green Road with wife Victoria Coury. He was making efforts to comply with Ecology’s order when they were hit with the fine, he said, and has since filled in the drainage ditches.

On Friday, he and his mother and father continued working on the grassy field, which is in a particularly rural and verdant part of the island. A pile of gravel and lengths of pipe sat piled on the grass after being removed from a ditch. The wetland in the back of the property continued to bubble with life.

The family members said they were in a state of disbelief over the fine and the series of events that led up to it.

“We’re just normal people. We’re all just teachers,” Whiteman explained, later saying that Ecology’s actions and press release made him sound like a “Florida developer who drained a swamp to build a shopping mall.”

Ecology, on the other hard, claims that Whiteman and Coury were given ample time to comply with the order but have been non-compliant and non-communicative. The department calculated that the seriousness of the violations warranted a fine of $4,000 per day. The couple was out of compliance for 516 days and could have faced a fine of more than $2 million, but officials decided “this penalty amount would have been too high to encourage them to take corrective action,” an Ecology spokesperson said in an email.

Ecology accuses Whiteman and Coury of unlawfully trying to drain a wetland in order to build a house on the property and then refusing to follow an order to restore the property.

Whiteman agrees that a wetland exists on the back of the property, but he said he wasn’t trying to drain it — just prevent it from infiltrating the entire property. The problem, he said, is that the long-existing drainage channel had been blocked on a neighbor’s land. The new ditches followed a 1980s plan from the Soil Conservation District and were meant to stop surface water from expanding across a field that had historically been used for agriculture.

Whiteman’s neighbor, Mark Lewis, agreed that the backup of water in the area is caused by a blockage in the regular drainage, a small stream on the back of Whiteman’s property. He said he can no longer use his pole barn in the winter because 4-6 inches of water accumulate, which has only happened in the last few years.

Whiteman’s attorney, Peter Ojala of Snohomish, said a second, smaller wetland that Ecology identified “does not exist during normal circumstances” and so should not be regulated as such. He said a 90-page report by a civil engineer, the historical use of the property and aerial photographs show that the flooding is new, created only recently by the off-site blockage.

“Ecology is saying that someone can block a stream and flood someone else’s property and suddenly that’s a wetland,” Ojala said. “That’s insane.”

Yet Ecology’s arguments before the Washington Pollution Control Board do not delve into whether a channel was blocked or water was rising. Whiteman built drainage ditches without a permit and harmed a valuable wetland, the department claims.

“Once wetlands are damaged, it may take years to restore their capacity for cleaning and storing rainwater and for recharging aquifers,” Joenne McGerr, program manager of Ecology’s Shorelands and Environmental Assistance Program, said in a press release. “Ecology has offered the property owners ample opportunities to comply with Washington law, but instead they have continued to drain and degrade these wetlands.”

Whiteman, an Oak Harbor High School graduate, and Coury purchased the property from a former teacher in 2020, not long after they moved to Oak Harbor. Whiteman teaches at the high school while Coury is an elementary school teacher.

A summary judgment by the Washington State Pollution Board explains the events that led up to the fine, though some are under dispute.

In 2019, the former owner of the property applied with the county to build a septic system on the property, but the county rejected it because it failed a perk test. In January 2021, Coury filed for an application with the county for a site address for the property, which Ecology claimed was evidence of intent build on the property.

In September 2022, neighbors in the Green Road area alerted the county planning manager that Whiteman and Coury had built excavating ditches and placed tubing and drain rock without a permit. Neighbors were concerned that a pond and stream were drying up.

Based on the complaints, the county planning manager visited the property and then contacted a wetland specialist with Ecology about what he found.

On Sept. 15, 2022, the county issued a cease-and-desist order that directed Whiteman and Coury to halt any work on the site. The county staff and the Ecology scientist visited the site five days later, which Whiteman said was without permission and a violation of his rights. Ecology also sent a voluntary compliance assistance letter to the property owners, informing the couple that they needed to remove the alterations to the site.

In February 2023, neighbors alerted the county that the ditches were still present. A month later, Ecology issued an administrative order directing Whiteman and Coury to remove the liners, drain rock and pipes from the ditches; backfill and compact the ditches to prevent water flow; install eruption control on the exposed soil; restore and plant the filled ditch areas; and contact Ecology after the work is complete.

On April 21, 2023, Whiteman appealed to the Pollution Control Hearings Board, arguing that the wetland was not present “under normal circumstances” and that draining part of the property was necessary for haying and other historical agricultural uses of the land.

On June 17, 2024, the board issued a summary judgment in favor of Ecology. The board resolved that wetlands are present on the property, rejecting Whiteman’s contention that the land had previously been converted to dry farming land and is not a wetland under normal circumstances.

Whiteman said several factors delayed the restoration this summer. He said he wasn’t able to access the property with equipment to do the work until the dry season of August. He explained that he had been communicating with Island County officials since June about the restoration process and received conflicting information. The county told him he needed to wait and get a permit before doing the work while Ecology wanted the work done immediately, he said.

Ojala said he had also been communicating with Ecology’s legal counsel about the restoration process and was also shocked by the fine.

“Maybe one hand didn’t know what the other was doing,” he said about Ecology staff.

The Ecology spokesperson had a different version of events.

“While Whiteman and Coury may have been recently working with Island County, they failed to work with Ecology at any point to demonstrate if they are complying with our legal order,” the email states. “Ecology consulted with Whiteman’s attorney about what needed to be done to come into compliance and we reiterated several times that Whiteman should reach out to us if they had any questions, concerns or needed assistance. Whiteman and Coury failed to reach out to or work with us surrounding actions necessary to satisfy our legal order.”

On Sept. 3, Whiteman and Coury filed a petition for judicial review in Island County Superior Court.

In the meantime, Whiteman said the experience had been disheartening and expensive. Even without the fine, he and his wife spent tens of thousands of dollars on constructing the drainage system, removing the drainage system, hiring a consultant and contracting an attorney.

“We’re just exhausted,” he said. “We just want this to be over.”