RECAP OF THE CITY OF FW PUBLIC MEETING ON FLOODING/STORM MANAGEMENT
Comments provided by Sergio Yanes, AHNA EC Board Member
Last night I attended the City’s public meeting on flooding/storm water management for Central AH and Forest Park/Berry. There were approximately 40-50 people in attendance including Libby Willis from the FW League of Neighborhoods and Councilman Carter Burdette.
Essentially, this was a public meeting to kick-off a new study by the city on flooding & storm water management in the affected areas.
Greg Simmons (City of FW Storm Management) gave an overview of the results of previous studies which analyzed traditional engineering solutions. These included:
- Replacing the existing storm drain system with a large pipe (which would require tearing down houses and, in some cases, completely shutting down full width of streets)
- Detention basins (that would require tearing down houses)
- Deep detention basins (150 ft below ground and could require tearing down houses).
The cost of these projects for Central AH alone would run $30-$65 million; Forrest Park/Berry was significantly higher reach costs up to $155 million. Greg emphasized that the storm water fund revenue is roughly $25-$30 million per year and any of the solutions for these two areas could tie up that funding revenue for years while the city is still trying to tackle about $1 billion worth of improvements city wide.
The purpose of this new study is to look into alternatives other than traditional engineering solutions that are more feasible in terms of affordability and effectiveness. Ideally they would like something that could be phased in over a few years. The approach of the study is nothing is off the table. The team is going to investigate novel approaches by other cities to address this issue as well as some alternative engineering approaches. Two examples:
- Raising the pier & beam houses
- Improve the system to not completely solve the problem but reduce the frequency of flooding (ie: flood every 10 years instead of every 2 years).
Going forward they are forming a Stakeholder Task Force that would be a working committee of residents/stakeholders in the affected areas that would meet & discuss ideas with the consultants & city over the next few months (roughly October-February) with the objective of having a recommendation to council by April/May.
Reaction from attendees was mixed. There were a lot of complaints ranging from the city not keeping up with cleaning up existing storm systems, to how many studies will the city do until they finally make a decision, to previous bond funds being stolen to address these issues over the past years. In general, I think the attendees did a good job voicing their frustrations about a problem that has existed for a long time.
For more information, read today’s article in the FWST at: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/09/22/2488734/residents-disappointed-by-city.html#my-headlines-default