Photo courtesy of Leah Rice.
Beech Street
Children who live on and around Beech Street gather on the first day of school on a bridge that is in front of Karly Martin's house at 224 Beech Street. The bridge runs over a culvert where past flooding has concerned parents about the safety of their children. The city is now taking steps to alleviate future flooding issues in the area.
Improvement for storm runoff issues around Beech Street and Beech Circle could be coming soon.
Residents had previously complained that storm runoff in a creek near their homes had increased significantly since Tapestry Park apartments had been built. Walter Schoel of Schoel Engineering presented findings from a study of drainage in the area at the Dec. 8 City Council meeting.
Schoel’s study found that the impacts from the Tapestry development are so small that they would be difficult to measure. However, they found that a retention pond created as a part of an expansion at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church’s capacity to hold water has been obstructed by a beaver dam. The dam has since been removed, and future attempts to build another one will be monitored.
Schoel estimates that the system is about 50 percent oversized. To alleviate the drainage issues, Schoel’s report said that the best remedy would be an entirely new box culvert system but that it would be beyond the scope of the study, which was commissioned to address solutions that would not disturb adjacent residential properties, and that there might not be room for it anyway.
Instead Schoel recommended making the channel cross-section more uniform where it is narrow, in need or repair or has unusual bends. Schoel explained specifically where these changes could be made using a map.
As a result of the improvements, the area will still flood but will hopefully flood less frequently and less severely than it currently does, Schoel said.
The city’s Public Works department said it could make the improvements in-house.
Residents at the meeting said that their primary concern is children’s safety in the area but that they don’t have specific ideas about solutions to improve the safety.
In response, Schoel said that he believes the access to the creek cannot be closed and that these changes will not change the safety issue. Council members said they are concerned that anything put up to keep kids from falling in could create more flooding in the area but suggested the residents look at installing a fence on their property if Schoel determines that it will not affect the water flow too severely. Schoel did say that the proposed changes shouldn’t increase the speed of the water.
“We are so pleased with the improvements the city is planning for the area,” Beech resident Leah Rice said. “The speed and velocity of the water run off now is quite dangerous and as Mr. Schoel said always will be with an open culvert system. Hopefully, if we can lessen the frequency of these events and hasten how the system empties, this will reduce water levels in the culvert. As residents we try diligently to teach our children to never play in the ditch, especially after rains, when water levels can rise quickly.”
