Concerns raised over rain-garden installation
The city of Columbus expects to pay $80.7 million to install rain gardens in North Linden, the next step in a multiyear plan to spend tens of millions to divert stormwater to prevent sewer overflows.
But as in Clintonville, some North Linden residents wonder whether the cost of the Blueprint Columbus project, and the disruption to their neighborhood, will be worth it. Sue Linden is among them.
“It is a feeling of having it shoved down our throats,” said Linden, who mentioned similar opposition to traffic-slowing islands that were installed in — and then removed from — Maize Road and Norris Drive more than six years ago after residents complained that they caused too many accidents.
She also fears the rain-garden “bumpouts” installed on streets will cause accidents.
Linden and other residents have asked to meet with Columbus City Councilman Mike Stinziano to express their concerns.
“We want to do this right and not rush,” said Stinziano, who leads the public utilities committee.
The city is learning a lot of lessons in Clintonville, Stinziano said. There, residents have complained about how the rain gardens look, that they limit on-street parking on some streets, and that they will become “toxic dumps.”
Planning for the Linden work already has begun, with the project to begin in North Linden in the fall of 2018.
Columbus utilities officials have met with the North Linden Area Commission twice to talk about their plans, and mailed 4,000 notices in January 2017 to all residents and landlords in the first project area. There was a 30-day comment period, then a follow-up addressing the questions in April, when 35 residents attended a city meeting on the project.
The city said it has received little feedback from North Linden residents. On Oct. 9, crews placed signs marking future rain garden sites.
The city plans to install similar rain gardens in other neighborhoods in the future, including the Miller-Kelton area in 2019, followed by the Fifth by Northwest neighborhood near Grandview Heights, western Franklinton, and the southern part of the Hilltop.
All of these projects are aimed at reducing Columbus’ cost by $1 billion to meet the terms of a 2005 consent decree with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to reduce sanitary sewer overflows caused by stormwater runoff.
Linden said that she has met with Clintonville residents about their experiences and concerns. One of them, Al Jablonski, called the raingarden project a “contrived” $80-million experiment.
“This is something that will be laughed at,” he said.
Leslie Westerfelt, a spokeswoman for the city’s public utilities department, said officials want neighbors to understand what is happening, and plan to hold additional meetings before work begins.
“We’re trying. We also need people to say, ‘Reach out to us.’ We want to be responsive,” she said.
Walt Reiner of the North Linden Area Commission said he is hoping any issues that come up in Clintonville can be resolved so they don’t come up in North Linden.
Whitehall has also started to install rain gardens along Etna Road between Hamilton and Country Club roads as part of a street reconstruction project.
“These are different, perhaps larger than the ones in Clintonville,” said Zach Woodruff, Whitehall’s service director. The rain-garden project there is costing $3 million.
“It’s a way to increase the aesthetic appearance of some of these corridors,” Woodruff said, while also providing environmental benefits.