Wayne and Wanda Steck figured they had moved for the last time when they bought an oceanside house at 1768 Astra Rd. near Kin Beach Park in 1998. They thought wrong. Things were fine until the basement flooded in 2009 and again on Christmas Eve 2010. On the second occurrence, about seven inches of water destroyed flooring, appliances, furniture, and everything inside two offices and Wanda's craft room. The basement is still gutted to the studs."This is supposed to be our retirement home," said the semi-retired Wayne who was running a home-based business from the basement.The situation has especially stressed Wanda, who suffers migraine headaches. The couple's insurance company will not settle until the water problem is rectified. They have taken out a new policy with another company but could not obtain water coverage. The Stecks plan to eventually sell their devalued house."Without insurance you're always looking over your shoulder," said Wayne, who stacked sandbags at his back door when the flood occurred. The bags are still there. The water appears to have originated across the street at the bottom of a hill below Kincora Ridge Estates. Emcon Services, contractor for the Ministry of Transportation, had installed a culvert extending from the bottom of the development underneath Astra Road to a spot near the front of Steck's property."That didn't work because it started flooding again, so they ran another culvert towards the ocean," he said. "They stopped before the ocean because they said the Department of Fisheries would not allow them to run that water as a positive outlet into the ocean."The water worked its way into the basement, said Steck, who has spoken numerous times with the Transportation Ministry and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). He said the latter claims ignorance about the culvert. To complicate matters, the regional district has no formal involvement with storm water management."Everyone's passing the buck," Steck said. Others in the vicinity have flooded in recent years.Ken McEachnie, who lives on the other side of Astra Road, was also bailing water from his basement in the fall of 2009 and at Christmas, 2010. He said his property had not flooded before construction at Kincora, which sits across the road from CFB Comox.Kip Keylock of Ocean Estates Developments said flooding had occurred before the Kincora property was developed, due in part to water from the air force base.He recalls about 30 people attended a public meeting in 2005 before construction at Kincora."Their bottom line was fix the flooding problems," Keylock said. "It's not like this is a new problem. The biggest concern at the time was flooding."The simple question was, 'Can we fix it?' My engineer and consultants were there. The simple answer was, 'No, we can't fix it.'"Low-lying areas are low-lying areas. If you build low you have to deal with the consequences. However, it was made very clear we won't make it worse."He feels the situation worsened when McEachnie's neighbour, Robin Holmes, had a dam constructed on his property to measure the flow of water. Holmes had been involved in litigation with Ocean Estates Developments but the case was dropped.The Stecks have also sued the company, among other groups."It was suggested to them (Stecks) through our lawyers that they do a review with a professional," Keylock said, noting a large concrete driveway that slopes into the house. "We will fix what we can, but we can't fix Mother Nature."reporter@comoxvalleyrecord.com