West U City Council doesn’t want to be confused by facts

This is a view looking inside the storm sewer.

Monday night, April 25^th, our city council voted to purchase water retention capacity from the county for $403,000. That is one transaction - we pay the county money, they give us land.

A second transaction will follow. In exchange for the land we just purchased, the county will give us permission to take a concrete saw and cut a foot or two off of the concrete restrictor the county required us to install at the discharge outlet of the College St. flood project into the Poor Farm Ditch. Note, after this transaction we no longer own the land.

Two transactions, case closed. If only it were that simple.

At the council meeting, the first speaker was Dan Krocker, a homeowner in the College St. flood basin. Dan went into some detail explaining that Riley St. is the most severely flood prone street. The reason is that Riley St is at the deep end of the artificial lake that was created during the course of other flood abatement projects that have been undertaken in and around the area.

Artificial lake? Let me explain. One flood abatement technique is to lower the streets, making them catchment basins. We did this all over WestU including the College St flood basin. But consider the four boundaries of this flood basin. University on the north, Wesleyan on the east, Bellaire on the South, and Southside Place on the west. The three streets are metro bus lines and they were not lowered for obvious reasons. Southside streets have not been lowered. In addition, the effect of their “berm” was made worse for WestU residents when the chain link fence that used to separate the cities was replaced with wood fences that act like a dam.

The College St flood basin is unique. Our city responded by installing a very specific storm sewer which  directed flood waters on a circuitous route all the way back to the Poor Farm Ditch.

Then our neighbors to the south complained and the county responded by requiring a restrictor to be installed at the outlet of the storm sewer into the Poor Farm Ditch under the Edloe St bridge on Bellaire Blvd. This angered the residents because they thought this restrictor would have a negative impact their brand new flood abatement system.

Voice levels rose and fingers were pointed.

Then on April 18^th, our engineers released a study that clearly showed that the restrictor has almost no effect on flood levels on the impacted streets, except for Riley St, where the restrictor has a larger impact because the storm sewer is larger by the time it gets to Riley. But remember, Riley is at the bottom of the pool.

In other words, all of the anger over the restrictor has been misplaced. The restrictor is inconsequential.

At the council meeting Monday night our engineer was explaining all of these details to the council and all of the citizens present at the meeting. Mayor Kelly was hammering this point home at the council meeting when he was asking questions of our engineer.

Before Kelly was finished questioning the engineer, Steve Segal called the question. This is a parliamentary tactic which ended the discussion and precluded any further debate on the issue. City councilmen Segal, Fry, and Boehme voted to stop debate and then voted to purchase the land. Kelly voted “no” to stop debate and “yes” to purchase the land.  Councilman Guffey was absent.

The debate was cut off by Segal at the very point where Kelly was exploring other engineering solutions that might actually provide true relief.

Note: Segal was on the council in 2006 when it was decided not to help the streets that dead end at the fence separating WestU from Southside. This could have been done by spending another $1M on top of the $8M to install a storm sewer in those streets that would drain floodwater to the larger storm sewer on College.

I was astonished.

The issue of the restrictor is moot. Earlier in the meeting Steve Segal said we ought to purchase the land because we “promised those folks we would.” That was all well and good when he thought the restrictor would bring some relief to the flood victims. When the engineer confirmed that the restrictor would have minimal effect, common sense would dictate that you change your mind.

The argument was raised that since this land is cheap we should leap at the chance because it may never come by again. But as I say above, we will no longer own the land once we sell it back to the county in exchange for eliminating part of a useless restrictor.

Is the argument now that the land we purchased is somehow valuable or useful for another purpose?

I am confused by the facts. Have we been had?