PIERCE COUNTY, Wash. Property owners along Clover Creek say flooding, water quality problems and dried-up creek beds are being made worse by beaver dams and unmaintained vegetation on Pierce County-owned land, according to KIRO 7 News Seattle.

Bob Trapp told KIRO 7 that his Tacoma property along the creek once had acres of grass where his dogs could run off-leash. Now, he said, it is a swamp for much of the year, then dry and cracked when the water recedes in summer.

Trapp said the problems started six or seven years ago on land his parents bought nearly 50 years ago. The flooding has turned the water in his shallow well brown, he said. "We have to boil our water, because we don't know; it stinks like swamp," he told KIRO 7.

When Trapp looked into the cause, he said he found tall grass, heavy vegetation and beaver dams choking the creek. Some dams sit on property slated for a new development, but he said most of the problems lie on county-owned land downstream. The county owns two parcels along the creek between 20th Avenue East and 25th Avenue East.

On the other side of those parcels, Randy Grams faces the opposite problem: the creek near his home has dried up. "A lot of the trees are drying out and dying," he told KIRO 7. Grams is part of the Clover Creek Restoration Alliance, which he said has struggled to get access to clean up degraded and overgrown stretches of the creek.

Pierce County's Planning and Public Works Department confirmed there are beaver dams on its property but said it suspects additional dams on private land upstream and downstream. "This reach of Clover Creek is very flat, and both high surface water and high groundwater levels are common," Public Information Specialist Amanda Smith wrote in an email to KIRO 7, noting the area is a regulated floodplain and wetland and that elevated water "can result from multiple factors and are not solely attributable to beaver activity."

Smith said the county continues to monitor and actively manage the properties, which are "allowed to function in a natural state" to provide water quality and ecological benefits. She added that shrubs and tall grass help keep water clean and that downed trees can reduce downstream flooding.