Democracy on the Front Lines
City Administrator’s Blog
Walter Denton
July 12, 2007
I don’t need to tell anyone that we had a strong storm on Tuesday afternoon. It didn’t rain for very long, but it was intense and caused some localized flash flooding. As expected, we received several calls from residents who experienced flooding and they wanted to know what the City would do about their drainage problems. (Click here to read the City's Stormwater Maintenance Policy.)
Most of the calls were from locations that are well known to us as problem areas. Although we are aware of many of the drainage problems in the City and can pretty well identify why the problems are occurring, solutions do not come as easily.
The drainage complaints generally fall into two categories: (1) Flooding comes from the front yards from the street and/or drainage ditch or; (2) Flooding comes from a drainage ditch or creek that runs through their back yard.
Let’s start with flooding in the front yards. This type of flooding is mostly found in the oldest parts of town near downtown with drainage ditches rather than curbs and gutters. These neighborhoods are extremely flat and drain poorly. In addition, the homes were built many years ago before people gave much consideration to stormwater detention and drainage. As a result, the situation becomes quite complex because one homeowner’s drainage problem is actually a subset of a much broader challenge of fixing drainage for an area containing several blocks and many houses. It is difficult to fix one home’s problem without affecting the drainage for the entire neighborhood.
The City began addressing this stormwater problem a couple of years ago with the Stormwater Master Plan. The plan identified areas of flooding throughout O’Fallon and provided recommendations on improvements. Twenty-three projects were listed in the plan that totaled $12 million.
In addition, the Mayor and City Council formed a Stormwater Advisory Committee (SWAC) in 2005 that studied the City’s stormwater challenges and made recommendations on how to address the problems in a comprehensive manner. The Committee recommended that a proper stormwater budget should be about $1.2 million per year to provide for maintenance, development enforcement, and capital improvements.
The City’s current stormwater budget is around $470,000. The Committee recommended that a Stormwater Utility be created that would establish a monthly fee on residents to fund stormwater improvements. The fee could range anywhere from $1 to $5 per month, depending on how much General Fund and Proposition S funding is contributed to the Stormwater Utility. Consultants are currently conducting a study that would determine the rate structure for the utility. The City Council will then deliberate the merits of the study and make a decision on whether a Stormwater Utility is appropriate for O’Fallon.
A Stormwater Utility would provide the necessary funding to implement an annual capital program to make substantial improvements in areas with street flooding and front yard drainage ditches.
Which brings us to the second kind of flooding problem in O’Fallon, that being flooding from backyard ditches and creeks. Although the water going down the ditches/creeks come from streets, storm drains, and other houses, the City has no jurisdictional authority to do anything in people’s backyards. The City has no right-of-way and few easements specifically dedicated for drainage in backyards. If an easement exists, it is not City property and can be used by other utilities. In most cases, the ditch or creek is within the residents’ property lines, so they literally own the problem.
Backyard drainage problems are common in the older parts of town but also can be found in relatively newer areas of O’Fallon, such as Southview Gardens and subdivisions along Deer Creek Road. The residents own the waterways behind their houses and the City has no authority to do work on private property.
New subdivisions generally do not have this problem: creeks are designated as common area outlots that are maintained by a homeowners association. This removes ownership liability from the specific homeowners and places maintenance responsibilities on all residents of the subdivision and precludes flood insurance requirements (in many cases).
The cost for the City to assume maintenance responsibility for backyard drainage systems would be substantial. There is no conceivable way for the City to do this without a new funding source, which brings us back to the Stormwater Utility.
A Stormwater Utility that would provide a steady revenue stream (pardon the pun) to fix drainage problems throughout the city. The policy question is whether the residents and City Council feel that stormwater drainage is a big enough problem to devote significant resources to make substantial improvements. (There are certainly are a number of passionate residents who want their stormwater problems solved.) If not, then we will continue to make incremental changes when money is available and continue to listen to disappointed residents every time we get a strong storm.
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