City addresses water runoff
When Debbie Yates left for work Tuesday morning her yard was ripped apart and a long, muddy ditch cut from one end of her back yard up to the front…and she couldn’t have been happier.
Yates attended the July 6 city council meeting and asked the city to fix an ongoing problem of water runoff in her yard. Yates lives on the corner of Center and Terry streets in Columbia at the bottom of a slope that brings water toward her residence from three sides.
Her neighbor, Terry Davis, is also a victim of water drainage and a portion of his basement wall collapsed during early May flooding.
“I’m afraid if something isn’t done mine is going to do that,” Yates told council members. Davis recently asked the city for help as well.
A week after Yates attended the council meeting, city road department employees and workers for the county’s Class D jail facility were digging out old drainage lines with plans to add new pipes and two catch basins.
“I checked and it is the city’s drain through there,” Mayor Pat Bell said in an interview Monday.
Donnie Rowe, the city’s road department manager, said the city would place the new pipes, fill in the area, cover it with top soil and sow grass. In addition, catch basins on each end of Yates’s yard will either be replaced or repaired.
Rowe said the city is also adding rip rock to a drainage area around Davis’s house that will bring runoff into a catch basin on Center Street, hopefully solving the problem for Davis.
Yates had gotten an estimate and was told the work would cost her $15,000, had she done the project herself.
“I appreciate them doing it,” she said Tuesday. “I appreciate the mayor and council working with me.”
While the area has always been wet, Yates said she did not have water in her basement until explosives were used during the construction of the bypass. Since then, she removed paneling from her basement walls and covered them with a sealant. She has also seen several sink holes develop in her yard. During the May flood, water backed up into the drain lines in her home.
City employees may have stumbled upon part of the problem while digging out old lines Tuesday. A steady flow of clear, cool water indicated that an underground spring might contribute to the abundant water found in the drainage area.
Mayor Pat Bell surveyed the work Tuesday and talked with Rowe and city water manager Dana Rogers. Bell said in an earlier interview that he wishes the city could fix all water drainage problems residents face, but they are limited to what they can do.
This morning I had to say no to a woman,” he said. “We told her how to fix it, but we couldn’t fix it. The whole problem is on her property.”
Rowe said city workers fix about 10 to 12 water drainage problems a year. They use their own staff and equipment, even building catch basins, Rowe said.
“We do, like the mayor says, ‘in house,’” Rowe said.
By Sharon Burton
snburton@windstream.net
