By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
The City of Parsons discussed options to mitigate street flooding within the City. The discussion came as part of the City’s regular City Council meeting February 4th. On hand for the discussion was a representative from Thrasher, engineer Eric Sherrard. Also on hand was Water and Sewer Department Head Red Lipscomb.
The discussion began with a question from Council Member Sam Humphrey about street flooding along 3rd Street and 4th Street. “After Friday night we had some flooding down there on the streets,” Humphrey said. “On 3rd Street, on 4th Street, the alley down there is cut off right there at the bulk head and there’s another 15 feet until it hits the river.”
Lipscomb explained that the area Humphrey was describing was a sewer overflow for the area. Humphrey continued with a follow up question as to why water was coming out of it during the flooding event. Sherrard answered that with the City’s combined sanitary and storm sewer system being overwhelmed during the storm, the flooding event was one of the main reasons for the sewer upgrade project. “You do have a considerable amount of storm, that’s one of the reasons why we are doing the some of the work of the project,” Sherrard said. “Because you have combined sewers.”
Lipscomb also explained that during the storm there was so much water that it all had nowhere else to go. “There was just so much flow in the river that night and all the rain coming down melting all the storm water, the sewer lines running high, it didn’t have nowehere to go,” Lipscomb said.
Humphrey suggested running a pipe from the overflow the 15 feet to the river to alleviate flooding in the area during high water events. “If we run a pipe with a bulk head to the edge of the river and cut it at a 45 degree angle downstream and let the river pull that out instead of leaving it right there in a big pond,” Humphrey said.
City Recorder Richard Lemons said he had a similar suggestion back in 1996 when there was a similar issue along 2nd Street. “We had that same issue back in ’96 right here on 2nd Street,” Lemons said. “I worked for the City. We proposed building a wing wall out and doing what you talked about, but not a pipe because that way the pipe wouldn’t get jerked down the river by high water, but angle it. But I was told at that time I was out of my mind because all it would do is create more back up. And I’m like if its flowing, its sucking it downstream. Its not going to flow it back up the pipe. I was told I was an idiot at the time and they abandoned it.”
Sherrard said it was problem that would have to be looked at since regulations would not allow a structure to be built directly into the stream of the river. “We’d have to look at that,” Sherrard said. “A lot of times they don’t want you to build a structure that goes right into the water. They want it landing on something. A lot of storm outfalls they have rocks, but even sanitary, they usually want to run out onto rocks before it cascades in. But during flooding events it gets up, so you can turn those structures so that they are upstream so that if it gets up over them, stuff can still escape. It is something I would want to look at, just because they wouldn’t let you take a pipe out into the stream to drop into the water.”
Lipscomb suggested having Thrasher survey the line by camera in order to learn where it runs. According to Lipscomb, no one is certain where the line runs for certain in the area. “One way to is have Thrasher come in camera that line,” Lipscomb said. “Because we don’t have the technology they got.”
Humphrey said he went to the area during the event and found that the water was running under a house in the area. Sherrard said that there were likely many old corrugated metal storm sewer lines running under homes in the area. “Once we move over to this part of town with more sewer line placement, you actually have storm lines that run under people’s houses,” Sherrard said. “Some of it is laid very flat. A lot of it is in bad condition. I don’t know how much of it is corrugated metal pipe.”
Sherrard said that his company has been in contact with a contractor that specializes in lining old corrugated pipe with a rubberized insert to reinforce and extend the life of existing pipe in areas that are not easily accessed. “We’ve been talking with a contractor, he’s going to do a demo for us that will line corrugated metal pipe even with the bottom rusted out of it in areas that you can’t get into,” Sherrard said.
Besides being under a lot of homes, Sherrard said there is likely many pipes that are damaged from time. “There’s a lot of areas that corrugated pipe was the go to, but now 30 years later or if you have acid mine drainage, the bottom of that pipe’s gone and there’s a lot of it that’s under people’s houses,” Sherrard said.
According to Sherrard, case studies and tests are being conducted as to the feasibility of the liners that can accommodate anywhere from a 36 inch to 120 inch diameter pipe. “So we’re exploring, we’re doing some test runs, some case studies to see how that holds up, because it not only lines the pipe, it actually adds some structural rigidity back to it,” Sherrard said. “So we’re just evaluating that.”
Sherrard said one of the goals of the sewer project is to identify and tag everything that is tied into the sewer system currently. “One thing that we are doing in the sewer project is we are going to identify everything that is tied into the sewer,” Sherrard said.
The identification will include identifying individuals who have run their storm water from gutter run off into the sanitary system, Sherrard said. “We’re going to smoke test every connection we come across to verify they are sanitary connections and that they are not somebody’s gutters or storm drain on the corner so we can identify what to do with it at that time,” Sherrard said. “There will be some allowance to lay some new storm, but if not, that’s what gets flagged to apply for the next chunk of grant money for.”
While the project includes the replacement of some storm line, it does not have enough funds for the entirety of the town, Sherrard said. “The project budget just doesn’t go far enough to keep replacing that storm line,” Sherrard said.
Sherrard said there is grant funding available if municipalities are creative. “As we learn more about this stuff and these different funding programs, you have to get creative, but there’s a lot of green money for storm water,” Sherrard said.
Because storm water does not generate revenue, it does not qualify for most funding sources, Sherrard said and is generally the last funded. “Storm is the last thing to ever get funded,” Sherrard said. “Because as storm water is not a utility, you don’t have revenue coming in, you can’t get a loan so funding issues haven’t looked at funding for storm projects.”
Sherrard said he recently received funding for a municipality through the DEP. While the effort required a certain amount of appeasements, it yielded $200,000 worth of storm sewers, Sherrard said. “DEP has grant money and I’ve recently gotten some grant money where we had to install certain green infrastructure to appease it, like we have a section of permeable pavers and we have daylight into the stream and unusable property, we created green space,” Sherrard said. “We were able to put in about $200,000 of storm system with all grant money.”
Humphrey asked what would happen if crews encountered several houses in the area had tied their gutters into the sewer system. Sherrard said that in the past the City had officially notified home owners to remove the gutters from the system. “For one thing, the City has actually notified them in the past,” Sherrard said. “If they’ve been found before, we’ll reissue that. They’re not allowed to have it tied in. The City can actually enforce that.”
Sherrard said that there is an issue of homeowners unhooking from the system only to reconnect gutters a couple of months later. “A lot of times people will unhook and then in a couple of months, they’ll hook it back in,” Sherrard said. “That’s what happens and it just comes down to the level of enforcement you want to put on that.”
Lipscomb said that the City will have to figure out what to do with the water before enforcement can begin to avoid flooding out properties. “Essentially if you are going to start enforcing it, you’re going to have to have, say, ‘Hey take that out or we’re going to give you a fine,’” Lipscomb said. “Well what am I supposed to do with it? Its going to flood my house. We have to have somewhere to put it before we can actually enforce it too harsh.”
Humphrey reiterated the sentiment. “Before we can enforce it, the City needs to have a plan in place of where we are going to put it,” Humphrey said.
Lipscomb said that in compact areas even a couple of inches of water coming off of roofs can cause significant flooding. “Water will just run off somewhere,” Lipscomb said. “You get a bunch of compact areas with everybody’s roof drains. So many feet of water per square feet of that roof, a couple inches of rain is going to produce a lot of water. You got to have somewhere to put it, if not, you’re just going to flood your neighbor out. Now its why we have the CSO’s, you know.”
Sherrard said that it is every property owner’s responsibility to mitigate the storm water on their property. “Every property owner is responsible for the storm water on their property,” Sherrard said. “They’re allowed to convey it to their neighbor, but the people whose water runs out of their gutters, their responsible for the management of the storm water on their property.”
Sherrard acknowledged that it is hard to enforce without a plan of what to do with it, but said the City is well within its rights to say that it cannot go in the sewer system. Sherrard also said that a secondary right the City had for property owners with gutters tied into the system was to charge a surcharge on their sewer bill for wear and tear on the system. “Its hard to enforce without having a place to put storm water,” Sherrard said. “But you are allowed to tell them they can’t put it in a sanitary sewer or you can implement a surcharge if their connection has been identified.”
Council Member Seth Rosenau questioned if property owners could discharge the storm water onto the sidewalk or into the street. Sherrard said that storm water could not be discharged in such a manner. “That is not managing storm water,” Sherrard said. “You discharge onto the sidewalk and it freezes and somebody slips and falls, what’s going to happen? Its got to be collected somewhere.”
Sherrard also said that cities often get involved with storm water management due to neighbors discharging onto neighbors. “What happens is they discharge on their neighbor and they would discharge on their neighbor and it ends up that the City steps in anyway because it becomes a nightmare,” Sherrard said. “And everybody ends up showing up at your meetings.”
“Its very difficult because storm water is so hard to fund,” Sherrard said.
