SWINOMISH RESERVATION — Seeking affordable waterfront property, Claudia and Ted Nasi bought a lot on Chilberg Avenue in the Snee-Oosh area here and built a home with windows filled with views of Skagit Bay.

“When things get a little stressful for me, I go walk the beach,” Ted Nasi said.

About three years ago, an extremely high tide combined with a storm surge sent high swells crashing into Skagit County’s saltwater dikes and waterfront homes.

Skagit Bay flowed over the rocky seawall that buttresses the road and into the Nasis’ and their neighbors’ yards, where it lapped at the homes lining Chilberg.

Nasi and his wife were terrified. Their neighborhood looked like a lake. In places, the water level rose to the top of their neighbor’s barn boots.

“I’m going to lose our home, and what recourse do we have?” Nasi said he remembers thinking at the time.

The reservation’s Snee-Oosh area is just one spot that tribal leaders are concerned will be affected by the sea level rise expected to come with climate change, said Ed Knight, a senior planner for the Swinomish Indian Tribe.

Higher sea levels mean storms and extreme high tides could cause more erosion and damage. Rising water during the 2006 storm came close to cutting off Reservation Road, the community’s northern access point to Highway 20, Knight said.

Planners also worry about the 960 acres protected by a sea dike along the western shore of the Swinomish Channel, just south of Highway 20 — land the tribe set aside for future economic development.

The 2006 storm increased awareness that the community needed to be ready for problems. Those could include an increase in some diseases, including West Nile virus; impacts on fisheries and a higher frequency of wildfires, Knight said. Most homes on the reservation, which is on the eastern side of Fidalgo Island, are nestled in the forest.

The level of Puget Sound could rise from 3 to 22 inches by 2050, according to a 2008 report by the Climate Impact Group and the state Department of Ecology.

“Sea level rise is one potential issue,” Knight said. “It’s a taste of what could happen, and are we prepared to deal with it? I don’t know.”

To determine how to deal with the effects of climate change, the tribe received a $320,000 federal grant from the Administration for Native Americans in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Swinomish also partnered with La Conner, Shelter Bay, and Skagit County Climate Action and Sustainability Program and other agencies. The tribe matched the grant with $80,000 in money and resources.

In Skagit County, most local governments’ climate change focus has dealt with mitigation, such as lowering electrical or fuel usage to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Swinomish officials are looking at how they can adapt to the impacts of climate change, as well.

“It’s a somewhat slow methodical process that we’re into,” Knight said. “We hope to be wrapping that up by the fall.”

Then, recommendations on policy changes and infrastructure improvement will be made, and the tribal Senate will decide what to do next.

The county’s climate task force will look at the results of the tribe’s work because information the tribe finds about the impact of sea level rise on Highway 20 and La Conner could affect county decisions as well, said Ryan Walters, a civil deputy in the Skagit County Prosecutor’s Office who sits on the task force.

County officials plan to incorporate sea level rise and other climate change impacts into its long-term planning, such as the Alternative Futures Project, which looks at various potential development scenarios, Walters said.

“Fundamentally, we need to roll climate change planning into all our existing processes,” Walters said. “There’s not a lot of money available for this.”

La Conner Town Administrator John Doyle said that once the town has a list of measures to reduce potential climate impacts, he will take it to the council for action. As with the tribe, that could mean changes in town policies and building regulations, and possibly in capital improvements.

“We’re still very early in the process,” Doyle said.

The Swinomish isn’t the only tribe working on dealing with climate change. An island village populated mainly by Inupiat Eskimos in the Northwest Arctic has filed a federal lawsuit against 24 energy companies, including Exxon Mobil, asking for damages related to global warming to move their community. In Western Washington, the Tulalip Tribes are among those looking at the issue, especially the impact on natural resources, such as salmon.

In Anacortes, the water treatment plant on the Skagit River is being upgraded to deal with the increase in silt expected when the river is more dependent on rain than on glacial melt, said Ryan Larsen, city planning director. Anacortes provides water for La Conner, Swinomish and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Oak Harbor.

Anacortes doesn’t have the money to study sea level rise. But storm erosion has already undercut one home on Anaco Beach Road, and waves from high tides and high winds have sprayed beachfront homes in that neighborhood.

For Skagit’s 12 dike and 11 drainage districts that protect about 55,000 acres of farmland from flooding and high tides, sea level rise is a concern.

But Chuck Bennett, a commissioner in Dike District No. 12, which includes the northern part of the Swinomish Channel, said it’s hard to know what to do with all the research done so far.

“It’s on all our minds, especially those of us who have sea dikes,” said Bennett, adding that he’s seen projected rises ranging from 6 inches to 20 feet. “You try to plan the best you can. It’s got to be adaptable and fluid, no pun intended, if needed.”

Part of the challenge with planning for sea level rise is that people have misinterpreted the data, Knight said.

“It’s probably hard for the average person to make the connection between what’s going on and what will happen,” he said.

Meanwhile in the Snee-Ooish area, Nasi, a retired engineer, said he doesn’t know whether the sea level will rise as predicted. But he knows any storm combined with an extreme high tide puts his home at risk.

A buttress of rocks and county road didn’t keep the water at bay three years ago, he said.

“The wall needs to be improved,” Nasi said. “Each storm that hits, it settles more. Rocks fall down, and the wall settles.”

Marta Murvosh can be reached at 360-416-2149 or .