Cape has plans to stop floods but not the cash

Street flooding was a recurrent problem in Cape Girardeau last year. On Aug. 27, rain gauges in the city registered more than 8 inches of water in about an hour. The Public Works Department was forced to close portions of 36 streets due to flooding. A couple of weeks earlier the department had closed 26 streets after a 3-inch downpour. On March 9, eight streets were closed.

Cape Girardeau public works officials have 20 storm-water projects on the drawing board but can find funding for only two.

In all, the department has identified 113 "high water streets" susceptible to flooding in a rainstorm. Places like Optimist Drive in Arena Park, the 2300 block of Good Hope Street and Themis Street at its intersection with Silver Springs Road all go under after a heavy rain.

Public works director Tim Gramling says things aren't likely to get better without an infusion of dollars.

Developers, he said, used to build subdivisions without worrying about the impact, but that has changed.

"In a subdivision you just had to drain the local area and there wasn't much downstream to worry about," Gramling said. Now, however, "There are so many things downstream that every little thing you do seems to impact someone."

2006 was Cape Girardeau's ninth-wettest recorded year with 54.14 inches of precipitation, according to the National Weather Service. It'd be tough to ever drain the water of some storms, said Gramling comparing it to dumping a bucket in a bathtub. "Some streets are always going to flood. You just try to minimize it," he said.

The 20 proposed projects would add retention basins, stabilize creek banks and update old and inadequate culverts and drains. The projects total $4.7 million.

But the city has no way to pay for most of what it has proposed. "With the current funding the way it is, we're never going to get caught up," Gramling said.

The city has scraped together grant money to help complete two projects. In the next year, city workers will install a 42-inch pipe running below Aquamsi Street near the River Campus to prevent flooding there. Workers will also design and install a box culvert to drain water at Themis Street and Silver Springs Road. Those projects total about $412,000.

Aside from that, no help is on the horizon for the other projects.

Mayor Jay Knudtson wants to see change.

"I'm sick and tired of looking some of these homeowners in the eyes and saying, 'Yeah, but it's a 100-year or a 50-year storm.' When it happens three times in a year, that story gets old. And there are pockets throughout our community where our citizens are being asked to deal with inconveniences due to water that nobody should be expected to endure," he said.

But just as streets have gotten wet, funding for storm-water projects has dried up.

Five years ago, the state Department of Natural Resources froze funds for Amendment 7, designed to help counties like Cape Girardeau pay for storm-water measures.

In April 2003, Cape Girardeau voters rejected a storm-water utility fee based on square footage. The tax would have cost the average Cape Girardeau homeowner between $3.50 and $5.25 per month and could have paid for 14 storm-water projects that have mostly languished since then. "We're woefully and inadequately funded for even just the day-to-day stuff that comes up," Gramling said.

Public works has a five-person storm-water maintenance division. To adequately address the city's storm-water problems Gramling said he would need 10 to 15 people and a budget double the $400,000 he currently has for storm-water use.

Gramling thinks as more people become frustrated by storm-water failures there may be a movement to find the money to do something about it. "I think that's something people could get behind if it ever did get back on the ballot," he said.

tgreaney@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245