City requests utility study of flooding

Council committee created to review issues, address needs

FAYETTEVILLE — City officials want to alleviate the flooding woes of residents and businesses but say they have a limited scope in which to operate. A stormwater utility study will gauge how much more responsibility the city could take on and at what cost. The City Council in June awarded a $229,000 contract with Jacobs, formerly CH2M Hill, to oversee the study. The point is to take a deep dive into the city’s drainage needs and figure out ways to pay for necessary improvements, which include a possible fee on utility bills. A council committee created by Mayor Lioneld Jordan to examine the issue met for the first time Tuesday. Council members Adella Gray, Mark Kinion, Sarah Bunch and Kyle Smith form the committee. Severe flooding in April last year triggered city officials to look at solutions. A preliminary assessment from City Engineer Chris Brown identified $15-20 million in needed drainage improvement. The estimate didn’t include labor costs. Brown’s suggested approach to address the needs combines use of the capital improvement fund, money from a potential bond renewal from voters next year and the stormwater utility fee. The fee would serve as an ongoing source of revenue for an ongoing cost, Transportation Director Terry Gulley said. “If we go out and do the

whole $15 million with the bond program, we’d still need a sustainable source,” he said. “That won’t solve it because it’ll start building up that amount again, and we’ll get behind more and more every year.” Maintenance work for drainage and flooding control includes everything from clearing debris out of culvert pipes to street sweeping to building detention ponds and keeping dams and stream banks in shape. All told, the city spends about $1.3 million annually in its stormwater effort, which includes labor costs and tangential work. That amount covers the minimum regulatory standards, said Alan Pugh, staff engineer. Right now, the city can only do drainage improvement in the right of way or property it owns because there’s no process to take on responsibility beyond that scope. “We’re not doing any private or residential ponds or commercial detention ponds,” he said. “We’re fielding complaints on those and passing them to the current owners of the ponds.” A detention pond is a low-lying area that temporarily holds water and drains it somewhere else. Private property owners can’t always take on the burden of making drainage improvements themselves, Pugh said. The city’s right of way is often spotty, he said. Effectively fixing a drainage issue requires taking on a swath of an area, rather than patches at a time. Older neighborhoods often suffer the most. Establishing drainage easements in developing neighborhoods didn’t become the city’s standard until around the late 1990s or early 2000s, Pugh said. The city generally requires a drainage easement for every four houses on an acre, for example. A drainage easement allows city workers to get onto private property and do the necessary work to prevent flooding. Without it, the city has no legal right to work on the property, even if the property owner wants it to, Brown said. The council members saw three approaches to the city’s extent of services for stormwater management, each more involving than the other. The first plan would basically be the same as what the city covers now as far as drainage maintenance and work, plus taking on areas on an as-needed basis as projects arise. A proactive plan would set up a process for the city to take over maintenance and responsibility for residential detention ponds, although it wouldn’t take on a pond already in critically bad shape, said Heather Dyke with Jacobs. The most aspirational plan would have the city maintain commercial detention ponds as a public responsibility, and it would have the city make sure miles of waterway embankments are clear. The bigger plan the plan, the more areas covered in the city but the higher the cost to do the work and pay staff for ongoing maintenance. That cost translates to the rate for the stormwater utility fee that residents would see on their water bill. Dyke asked the council members to look over the specifics of the plans and provide feedback. A public input session on the topic is scheduled for Sept. 20 at Ozark Natural Foods.