STORMWATER STRAIN: Water woes sinking in

By Jimmy LaRoue

Published: June 28, 2008

Ditch the delay.

Bud Hammond and Margee Showalter, both residents of Chatham Road, have dealt with flooding issues, and along with other residents there, have spent tens of thousands of dollars in their own remediation efforts.

With the studies done and plans in place, they want to see the money flow for the projects, so that the stormwater can flow freely out of the retention ponds, into the culverts and through the ditches to the South River, and not into their yards and homes.

Waynesboro voters in last fall’s bond referendum supported $6.2 million in prioritized stormwater projects – the city has yet to acquire the bonds, however.

Revenue streams

After going back and forth twice on whether to establish a $1.2-million stormwater utility or pay for a stormwater management program out of the general fund, the City Council opted to pay for the improvements out of the general fund, in part because of fears that any fee charged through a utility would hurt city businesses, in particular Invista.

The fibers maker, which is the city’s largest employer with more than 600 workers, operates its own stormwater management program.

A new council majority, made up of Bruce Allen, Frank Lucente and Tim Williams, also agree on this point and received the endorsement of the Invista workers’ union just prior to the May elections.

Invista officials say stormwater fixes should be paid from the general fund.

But with a slumping economy and a push to lower taxes, City Manager Doug Walker put forth a reduced stormwater program, which ended up at $585,000.

Damming testimony

Hammond and Showalter, and others in the Chatham Road neighborhood near Wal-Mart, haven’t left their basements and homes to chance. They’ve taken their own remediation efforts through landscaping and keeping the ditch behind their homes clear.

They say the stormwater problem has gotten worse since Wal-Mart came to the city. Its three retention ponds dump water toward the Chatham Road neighborhood, making the culverts and ditches overburdened, with water from intense storms spilling into neighbors’ yards, and sometimes, into their homes.

Department of Conservation and Recreation Regional Manager Jim Echols said that Wal-Mart was in compliance with erosion and sediment regulations when its parking lot was constructed, but that additional measures that weren’t required at the time would have helped the Chatham Road neighborhood.

“If we were designing that Wal-Mart parking lot today, there are other ways we could design it to minimize the detriments to water quality,” Echols said.

He said bio-retention measures would have addressed water quality and water flow at the same time.

With a few landscaped trees, along with an underdrain tied into the storm sewer system, Echols said Wal-Mart’s stormwater measures would have captured most of the pollutants and reduced, or slowed the water coming off the site.

Echols said the state would look for improved best-management practices to address these issues.

Treading water

The ditch behind the Chatham Road homes, residents there say, hasn’t changed in 35 to 40 years, even though there’s much more impervious surface in the city. They liken it to having higher road traffic, yet not having enough road to handle it.

The ditch would need to double in size to handle the flow. Otherwise, “it’s like roaring rapids coming through,” said Showalter, who added that she keeps hearing work will get done “when funding becomes available — and funding is never available.”

The worst storms are those that dump heavy rain in a short, concentrated period of time. Rain at a rate of two inches an hour “puts us in trouble,” Hammond said.

They favor a stormwater utility, but are most worried about having their flooding problems solved.

The problem isn’t just about stormwater, said Market Street resident Michelle Jenkins. She believes that stormwater, along with sewage treatment, and South River flooding, are connected.

“Don’t be fooled into believing that the three are not intertwined,” Jenkins said. She lives, she said, “in an area that is affected by all three issues, and I see firsthand how they affect each other. If the timing of each is a consistent enough pattern, then it could be assumed that they are somehow intertwined.” 

Work flow

City Public Works Director Brian McReynolds said residents in the Chatham Road area, and in the rest of Waynesboro, will see city crews out doing stormwater remediation work beginning July 1. The city’s Public Works crews will have “a lot of work to do,” but he said they’re ready.

McReynolds said that, over the course of the next three to six months, “I would expect that most citizens would see a considerable amount of activity.” He has a meeting in the works with Chatham Road residents to talk about design options for remediation work. He also expects to put out a request for proposals for design services on capital improvement projects one through seven.

He said that, for the first time, the city will have a defined stormwater program and “the funding to get it going.”

“There’s going to be a lot of work going on that a lot of people are going to see,” McReynolds said.