Ringgold officials address downtown runoff issues
There are two things everybody agrees on regarding the weather in Ringgold, Georgia’s historical downtown district on
July 9: It was hot — really hot — and it rained hard for 30 minutes.
Whether there was 1.5-2 inches of rain or 5-plus inches is up for debate, but there’s no doubt the result was a lot of water. Water
rose high enough under the railroad underpass near the Ringgold Depot to float a car. Stormwater runoff behind the Nashville Street storefronts brought water into multiple stores, requiring two to shut down for at least the rest of July.
“It’s been a long time since that overpass backed up,” said veteran city manager Dan Wright. “That much rain in that short of time feels like an act of God.”
Well-known attorney and former state Rep. McCracken Poston owns the Nashville Street building that houses Caffeine Addicts. The local coffee shop was flooded with 8 inches of water and has been closed since July 9. Ringgold Art and Frame Gallery next door had the same amount of flooding and closed. It was scheduled to reopen Tuesday.
“I’ve had an office downtown for 30 years,” said Poston, who also owns the building housing his law office one block up Nashville Street. “I have seen it rain harder than this, and we didn’t get this kind of flooding.”
The National Weather Service does not provide daily rainfall amounts in its daily historical readings, and the information was not readily available from the service’s Atlanta office.
WRCB-TV Channel 3 Chief Meteorologist Paul Barys said his Ringgold weather watcher reported only one-tenth of an inch of rain fell July 9.
At the Ringgold City Council’s regular meeting July 22, Poston questioned whether new development and the parking lots added behind the Nashville Street storefronts are having a negative impact on the stormwater drainage system.
The large City Hall parking lot uses impervious asphalt, causing stormwater to run off into a retention pond and then into the drainage system.
A smaller lot developed by the Downtown Development Authority is part of a new, mixed-use office building located between City Hall and Nashville Street. Its design uses pervious asphalt, meaning the water is expected to be absorbed by the asphalt.
“Using that asphalt got around them having to put in a retention pond, and it just does not work,” Poston said.
To make his point, Poston went to Facebook and posted several videos he narrated about the parking lots and drainage system. Included was his “scientific experiment” that consisted of pouring water on both lots to see if it would be absorbed.
“Just seemed like a good way to make people aware of what’s going on,” Poston said. “None of the water was absorbed. We do have a problem, and we cannot deny it.”
Three members of the city council — Mayor Nick Millwood, Kelly Bomar and Randall Franks — were among the 125-150 people who went downtown July 9 to help sweep water out of businesses.
The council authorized Wright to seek proposals from engineering firms to do a study of the drainage system behind the Nashville Street storefronts and other locations where Wright said backups occurred. He said the city already inspected some areas with cameras and found no blockages, and that a project is underway to install another catch basin in the area.
“The city is not dodging anything,” Wright said. “If there is something that needs to be corrected, we will wholeheartedly work as hard and diligently as you can to make it right.”