Friday, June 13, 2008

If it wasn't SO pitiful

Three years ago when we bought our northend home I noticed during times of heavy rainfall that our street would flood out as the drainage ditches just to the west of my home up to Lyon Street aren't deep enough to handle the capacity of water that drains down from Kearney.
Like any taxpayer I reported the situation via an online link and waited for ANY response. Fast forward one year and the same situation occurred and I once again filled out the online form to report this problem. The problem was SOOOO bad that my next door neighbor had a fishing stream flowing through his garage.
This year the problem has been exasperated by massive amounts of rain in the area and a couple of times I measured 4" of water flowing across the street in torrents. I wasn't even aware that white water rafting existed on the streets of Springfield.

Today I called the public works department and the lady I talked to told me the reason this problem isn't fixed is because the city doesn't have the funds to make these needed repairs. It seems quite evident the city has the funds for streetscapes down by the News Leader offices and for intersection improvements and various other "make work" programs but it doesn't have money for people who are "flooding" out on the northend of town.

I put a call into Todd Wagner, the department head, and he wasn't in his office so I left a message time will only tell if I get a reply.

Some might say that I only requested this service for personal gain, however my house actually sits above the street and it would need to rain quite a bit for my house to be effected. As any good neighbor would do I am also trying to protect those around me. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to deepen the channels of which the water flows through on its way to Doling Park. As I'm writing this the manhole cover just west of my property for the storm drain is spouting about seven inch water plumes out from around the cover.

The skies just open again and I think I should start a new fad here in Springfield called "street surfing" perhaps I should even charge for the availability of the event, then next year we can hold a street surfing competition during the times of heavy rain and charge admission to the event.

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