More property acquired for basin
The city has seven of the 11 parcels it needs for the Whittington Creek section of the Hot Springs Creek upstream detention system.
The Hot Springs Board of Directors approved the purchase of three parcels in the Whittington Creek watershed last week, adding to the four it approved in January. The properties will be used to widen and deepen the Whittington Creek channel, Public Works Director Denny McPhate said.
Miles Hermann came up with the detention concept when he was a student at Hot Springs World Class High School’s EAST Lab, an idea the city hopes will mitigate downtown flooding that has long frustrated storm
water managers. Runoff from the mountains overlooking downtown swells Whittington and Park creeks during heavy rainfalls, overwhelming tunnels that merge underneath the fountain at the intersection of Whittington, Park and Central avenues to form Hot Springs Creek.
The city explored diverting Hot Springs Creek and boring a new tunnel, but those ideas proved impractical. The detention system would hold water back upstream of Hot Springs Creek and gradually release it downstream, taking advantage of the 200-foot drop in elevation from downtown to the creek mouth at Lake Hamilton.
Stormwater managers have said the elevation change quickly dispatches runoff downstream. But when large accumulations of rain fall in a short period, the upstream creeks overwhelm the tunnel system and flood downtown. The detention basin would buy time for water to flow downhill to the lake.
A study funded by a federal flood mitigation assistance grant endorsed the detention concept. The Whittington Creek section is expected to reduce a 100-year flood downtown by 2 feet. A 100-year flood has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year.
Property acquisitions approved last week include a 0.17-acre piece owned by the First Presbyterian Church of Hot Springs. The parcel borders the 0.39-acre piece the city acquired from St. Mary’s Church earlier this year. The latter was split from a larger parcel St. Mary’s owns behind Whittington Place. It will be the northernmost part of the detention basin that will run southwest from the Whittington Creek tunnel to Ozark Street. The tunnel entrance is next to the First Presbyterian Church parking lot.
The board also approved the purchase of two small parcels along Ozark and Water streets. The stormwater fund will pay the $8,200 cost for the three parcels.
The city hopes to use grant funds to build both the Whittington and Park detention basins.