Camas sits at 712 feet, the highest community Vancouver Excavation Co. serves in Clark County, and that elevation defines the drainage physics here. Water does not pool on Camas ground the way it does on the low flats near the Columbia — it moves, and it moves quickly. The drainage problem in Camas is not standing water collecting in a low spot. It is runoff arriving from uphill, concentrated by slope and impervious surface, arriving at a foundation or driveway faster than the soil can absorb it.
Cut-and-fill lots are common throughout the hillside neighborhoods of Camas. When a lot was graded to create a level building pad, the cut face uphill became a natural collection point for any water moving across the slope above. During the Clark County wet season — October through May — that water does not detour around a foundation. It follows the path of least resistance, typically the soil line where the graded cut meets undisturbed ground, and it follows that line directly toward the structure. Lacamas Lake and the other water bodies near Camas sit at lower elevations collecting what the hillside sheds.
Rock is closer to the surface on the steeper slopes in Camas than on valley-floor ground, which limits how deep a trench can go and requires careful planning about where intercepted water exits once it is captured. Add to that the fact that Camas issues its own permits through the city — not Clark County — and the planning for a drainage installation here involves a different permit counter, a different set of standards, and sometimes a different review timeline than the same job would involve in an unincorporated part of the county. Population here was 26,065 at the 2020 Census, and the city's continued growth means new impervious surface is being added to these slopes on a regular basis, which increases the volume of water that has to be managed on each downhill lot.
The standard solution on a Camas hillside is an interceptor drain installed on the uphill side of whatever is being protected — foundation wall, driveway apron, garage slab, or retaining structure. A French drain in this context is not a perimeter system that collects water from around the structure; it is a capture trench that stops water before it arrives. The trench sits above the structure, collects sheet flow and seepage moving down the slope, and carries it laterally around and away to a safe downhill outlet.
Where the slope is steep and the cut face is exposed, a swale or berm may work in combination with the trench to slow and redirect surface flow before it concentrates against the structure. Steep driveways are a recurring concern on Camas hillside lots: a driveway that pitches downhill toward a garage is a natural channel in any rainstorm, and a trench drain or channel drain across the base of that drive — tied to a properly sized outlet pipe — is frequently the right solution. These cross-drive drains collect the sheet flow running down the driveway surface and divert it before it enters the garage or collects at the foundation below.
Every installation involves digging a perforated pipe bed set in washed drain rock, wrapped in filter fabric to prevent soil migration into the aggregate over time. The outlet — where the captured water daylights — matters as much as the trench itself. On a Camas hillside, the outlet needs to reach a point downhill where discharge will not create a new erosion problem on a neighboring property or on a city right-of-way. We design the outlet as part of the installation, not as an afterthought, because an interceptor drain with a bad outlet simply moves the problem one lot downhill.
Most residential drainage work in Clark County falls between $1,500 and $6,500 for a single-family lot. On a Camas hillside job, the variables that push toward the upper end of that range are rock depth and haul distance. When a trench hits rock at 18 or 24 inches instead of the full design depth, breaking or working around it costs equipment time, and the spoil from a rock trench weighs more and costs more to haul than dry dirt. Equipment and operator rates in this region run roughly $110 to $190 per hour; spoil haul-off runs $60 to $120 per cubic yard depending on material type and the distance to the disposal site.
What keeps Camas drainage jobs from surprising people at the invoice is a site visit before anything is priced. A site visit allows us to see the slope angle, probe for rock with a probe rod, measure the elevation break between the uphill face and the proposed outlet point, and confirm whether the scope of work will require a City of Camas permit. None of that information is available from a phone description or a satellite image. We walk the ground before we write the number.
We do not provide a price over the phone and revise it once the machine is on site. The written estimate we hand you after the site visit is what you will see on the invoice, subject only to changes in scope that you explicitly authorize before the work expands beyond what was quoted.
Other work we run near Camas: the full list.
The working window in Camas aligns with the dry season across Clark County: mid-June through September is when compaction holds best and when the ground is dry enough that a trench can be opened, backfilled, and settled before the rains return. The wet season runs from October through May, and while drainage work can be done during that window — an actively flooding yard or a crawl space taking water in January is an emergency, not an elective — wet conditions add cost and can make it harder to achieve proper compaction around the outlet pipe and backfill.
For Camas specifically, the city's permitting timeline is a scheduling factor that uphill homeowners sometimes underestimate. If the project scope requires a city grading or erosion-control permit, that review period needs to be built into the schedule before work can begin. We can help identify early in the planning process whether a permit is likely required so that the paperwork does not compress the dry-season window you have to work with.
Regardless of season, Washington's utility locate law requires the dig area to be marked in white and 811 to be notified at least two full business days — and no more than ten — before excavation begins. Under RCW 19.122.030 the legal responsibility stays with the excavator. We give our own notice on every project and do not start work inside the waiting period, even when a client has already given notice themselves.
We quote Camas work in writing — how we price.
High ground sheds water faster than flat ground ever could. On cut-and-fill hillside lots in Camas, the graded face uphill acts as a funnel that concentrates runoff and seepage from the slope above and directs it toward the structure below. The fix is an interceptor drain placed above the structure, not around it — stopping water before it arrives rather than after it has already reached the foundation wall or garage slab.
Camas issues its own permits through the city, not Clark County, for grading and drainage projects that exceed a certain disturbance threshold. Smaller spot repairs may not require a permit, but any work involving significant grading, new impervious surface, or alteration of natural drainage patterns likely will. We identify the permit requirement during the site visit so the right application goes to the right office before any trench is opened.
Design depth depends on where the interceptor needs to sit relative to the uphill grade — typically 18 to 36 inches on residential hillside lots. In Camas, rock can appear at shallow depth on steeper slopes, which limits practical trench depth and sometimes requires the outlet to be redesigned to work within the available depth. We probe before we price so the estimate reflects actual ground conditions rather than an assumption.
Under RCW 19.122.030, the excavation boundary must be marked in white before notifying 811, and work cannot begin until at least two full business days after the notice is submitted — with a maximum advance window of ten business days. We handle the locate request on every project ourselves and build that mandatory waiting period into the schedule from the start so it does not compress the installation window.
The outlet matters as much as the trench itself. On a Camas hillside, captured water has to daylight at a point where it will not erode a neighbor's property or flow across a right-of-way without authorization. We typically run the outlet pipe around the structure to a designated discharge point at the downhill property line or into a roadside drainage feature. The outlet is designed as part of the installation, not added after the fact.
Send us the address and a brief description of where the water appears relative to the slope above your structure — we will walk the grade, locate the uphill source, and hand you a written interceptor-drain price before we leave the property. No phone quotes on hillside drainage; the ground tells a story only a site visit can read.