A map showing the area where the flooding occurs. Courtesy of the city of Mountain Brook.
There wasn’t a flood of answers to the flooding issues that plague the area near Richmar Drive and Mountain Lane in Mountain Brook.
However, the Mountain Brook City Council heard lots of ideas during a special meeting on May 2 – from residents and experts – as they look for ways to address the issue that appears upstream, downstream and in between.
Council President Virginia Smith opened and closed the hour and a half-long session acknowledging that immediate solutions wouldn’t magically appear.
“What we want to do is improve the situation,” Smith said. “As I said going in, we're not going to make everybody happy. Listening to the hydrologists in the room, we're not going to solve it for everybody. But, I do think we've learned a lot and I think that the council has a lot of things to weigh.”
The meeting included frequent references to a map that was shaded to denote the areas of concern – Area 1 that is upstream, Area 2 and then Area 3, which are downstream.
The council didn’t sit on the dais, opting instead to sit at floor level at tables aligned in a U-shape to invite more of a conversational atmosphere.
Mark Simpson and Walter Schoel of Schoel Engineering explained the various aspects of the flooding and the possible answers to each.
But as Simpson has said at previous council meetings, addressing the problem in one area could worsen the situation in another, and the council has repeatedly said it didn’t want to create issues downstream while fixing them upstream, or vice versa.
And while the meeting ended with no solutions, most residents expressed gratitude to their elected officials.
“I'm glad that the city is talking to the residents about it,” said Charlie Pringle, who attended the meeting with his wife Anne. “It's a complicated problem. I’m glad the city is organizing a forum where they can hear from all the residents.”
