A 20-minute downpour Monday in Pittsburg, Kan., left major intersections flooded.
"It's been one of the most persistent problems we've got," said Pittsburg City Manager Allen Gill. "But we've had some horrible downpours that are blowing things out of proportion. I think you have to be careful about passing judgment. You can't size up any storm system based on a [once in] 100-year rain."
City workers continue to build a sewer that will have lines running to various Pittsburg streets. A city storm water utility is funding this project, which has been a long time coming.
Pittsburg director of public works Bill Beasley said crews have been repairing infiltration problems in areas besides those prone to street flooding while they wait for utility money to accrue. "We've done some repair work at the mall and done some little projects cleaning ditches and doing operation and maintenance projects," Beasley said. "[The utility] has been building up because we knew we were going to have to do those capital projects, and it hasn't been enough yet."
Beasley added, though, that plans for the project are 95 percent complete and that construction could start following bids and an extensive utility relocation. "We are waiting for the utility companies to relocate those lines," he said. "There are a number of lines in the area, and it could be quite a while before it's done. They have told us it could take as much as six months to relocate those utilities."
If that is the case, construction would begin in January and Beasley estimated that the project would take about one year to complete.
About one year after Pittsburg's utility went into operation, city commissioners approved the initiation of five projects, including this storm sewer undertaking, totaling $5.15 million. They estimated that all five projects would take three years to complete; that three-year completion date is coming up in December.
Gill said that one of the main reasons the project will not be done in time is because it has grown in scope. "At one point, it may have grown beyond our ability to pay," he said. "That's one big reason it changed. The area is so flat, it's the kind of the bottom of the bowl... and part of the problem is that it's got to be some pretty sizable piping because there's so much water that goes into that area so quickly. I'm sure that's a project we'll have to build and then expand on even more later."
That could take even more money from the city's utility, which is currently scheduled to run for another six years. The utility started out at $2.97 per month for each Pittsburg household. That price has grown to $3.06 per month since. The fee for local businesses is based on a multiple of what a resident is chaged and the amount of impervious space on their property. The fee has raised about $2 million from 2004 to 2006, with anonther $640,000 projected for 2007. Most of this money has gone toward staffing.
One employee was a new hire, and three others transferred from the public works department and are now paid from the utility. "The storm water is not just for flooding purposes, it's for pollution control, and the street sweeper cleans up residue and oils like the salt and sand left over from the winter," said director of finance Jon Garrison. "The others are considered storm water employees because they are cleaning the storm drainage ditches and manholes and inlets."
Pittsburg Mayor Bill Rushton said these workers are investing time in manhole and below-ground box restoration while they wait for capital projects to kick off. He said it will take a while for them to fix the city's storm water problem. "Our system just isn't designed for those major downpours," Rushton said. "Nobody's is. We're working on it, and it seems like every time we try to work on it, we wind up further behind. The whole thing is just a mess."
Source: The Morning Sun
