More soggy misery for the folks downstream from the self-styled "character experts!"
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The Times RecordCity Council slogs through more tales of water woesBath residents seek recourse for chronic flooding and sewage overflow damageBy Seth Koenig, Times Record Staff
Published: Thursday, May 19, 2011 2:08 PM EDTBATH — On the fifth straight day of wet weather, the Bath City Council found itself in familiar soggy territory Wednesday, grappling once again with neighborhood flooding problems.
This time the council heard from residents of Pine Hill condominiums and those from Willow Street, whose neighborhoods have regularly become ponds of stormwater and sewage in recent years after heavy rains rolled through the Mid-coast region.
After a short public hearing on the city's proposed 2011-12 municipal budget Wednesday night, the council held back-to-back workshops to talk about the flooding problems plaguing the two areas.
City officials are all too familiar with sewage and stormwater backups that drown vehicles and lower floors of homes, as the city has spent more than $2 million since 2008 on various infrastructure improvements intended, in part, to alleviate chronic flooding in the Park Street neighborhood.
Now the focus shifts to two other areas where residents say their yards — and sometimes even their homes — are rendered useless to them because of water pooling several feet deep as a result of storms.
"This is happening every year and it's getting worse and worse and worse," said Willow Street resident Gina Hamilton, one of a number of residents of both neighborhoods to turn out Wednesday night.
Included in a proposed $13.39 million city budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is $70,000 to pay for engineering studies in the two neighborhoods to devise plans to combat the flooding problems.
The Pine Hill condominium complex is off Richardson Street, downhill from the private Hyde School campus. During heavy rains, stormwater streams down a channel near a school athletic field and pours into the condominium complex, where the parking lot storm drains quickly become overwhelmed.
Ward 2 City Councilor Sean Paulhus said Wednesday night that the city's proposed engineering study would focus on replacing the pipe from the storm drains to the faster flowing Richardson Street line with one at least three times the capacity of the current pipe.
That change would allow the drains to accommodate significantly more stormwater before backups occur there, Paulhus said.
"This remains my No. 1 priority," Paulhus, whose ward includes Pine Hill, told attendees Wednesday. "This engineering is a good step forward, but it's just a first step, and we've got a long way to go."
City Manager Bill Giroux acknowledged that the Pine Hill homeowners' association sought an engineer's estimate for how much the work would cost, but said city officials "think it's more than" the $500,000 the association's engineer suggested.
Still, the Pine Hill pipe replacement would likely prove cheaper than what the city's consultant believes might need to be done to reduce the Willow Street flooding.
Stephen Dyer of Ransom Environmental Consultants Inc. said city officials might have to consider a $1.5 million stormwater pump station project near the Willow Street neighborhood, which would force rainwater currently flowing to the area from uphill drains to defy the laws of gravity and flow elsewhere instead.
In the short term, the city will consider a roughly $220,000 project in which a deteriorating nearby sewer line — traveling alongside railroad tracks parallel to Willow Street — would be sealed to prevent sewage from leaking into the water that regularly pools in the area.
Giroux told city councilors he will likely discuss with them during a closed-door executive session at an upcoming meeting the possibility of purchasing one Willow Street home that has been particularly susceptible to the flooding.
Hamilton urged city officials to seek reimbursements from the Maine Department of Transportation, because she said the buildup of the nearby state-owned railroad tracks about five years ago corresponded to when the flooding problems started becoming more severe.
Giroux said once the budgeted engineering work is done to cement the best course of action in both neighborhoods, the Pine Hill stormwater pipe replacement and Willow Street sewer pipe repairs would likely be paid for with bond money during the summer of 2012.
More expensive work, he said, would likely need to be funded by a larger bond subsequently put before the city's voters at the polls.
"It's a little heartbreaking," City Councilor Mari Eosco said of the residents' flooding troubles. "I wish we could say, 'Oh, this is the problem and let's fix it,' but it doesn't sound like that's the case."
skoenig@timesrecord.comCopyright © 2011 Times Record
