Storm-water projects stretch funding set aside by Cape Girardeau

B.J. and Christa Miller live on Dorothy Street next to a small stream that runs through a pipe under the road. They have lived in the home with their 4-year-old daughter Annabeth and a cat named Pookie since 2004.

One bank of the stream is held in place by rocks secured with chicken wire. On the Millers' property, the stream bank is being eroded away and the old railroad ties used to protect it are slowly collapsing into the waterway.

During heavy rains, water washes over the road because the pipe can't handle the flows. During one storm, Annabeth's plastic swimming pool washed away.

"We have complained because every time we get a big rain and it floods, it wears away at our yard," B.J. Miller said. "We kept being told by the city that it was not their problem."

But runoff is a city problem, and voters in April 2008 approved a tax with money set aside to fix drainage issues in a dozen locations.

A storm drainage ditch on Dorothy Street in Cape Girardeau will fill up during storms and cause flooding on the street and adjoining yards.

Most of the $25.3 million raised by the tax is earmarked for high-profile parks projects such as the Aquatic Center, now under construction at the Osage Community Centre.

The plan also set aside $3 million for the storm-water projects. Now the city is finding that may not be enough. The estimated price tag for all the drainage projects, including two already completed, has grown to $4.5 million.

The Cape Girardeau City Council will hear a briefing on the progress of the storm-water projects today, Public Works Department director Tim Gramling said. The update will provide details of how the projects have changed from original plans because of engineering issues and environmental concerns, he said.

Status of the projects

Of the dozen projects, two are finished, one is under contract, several are ready to seek bids and the remainder are still being designed. Projected completion dates are in flux, with many now expected to be finished later than originally planned.

To make up shortfall, the city is hoping for help from the state, either from a statewide bond fund or federal economic stimulus dollars. But that hope is unlikely to be fulfilled. The state has no money for grants from the bond fund. And all of Missouri's federal stimulus funds for clean water projects have been allocated, said Traci Newberry, unit chief of the financial assistance center in the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

The other possibility for keeping the program on track, Gramling said, is that contractors will bid less than the city expects to pay. The two projects completed so far -- installing a monitor on the LaSalle Detention Basin and the reconstruction of the Lisa Street Detention Basin -- have cost almost $107,000 less than the initial combined estimate of $353,700.

And bids were opened June 17 on a contract to replace two pipes under Themis Street near Silver Springs Road with a box culvert. Fronabarger Concreters won the work with a bid of $126,491, bringing the total project cost to about $154,000, or $96,000 less than originally estimated.

"A lot of contractors are hungry for work and we are getting some very good prices," Gramling said.

The storm-water projects are intended to reduce street flooding by stopping some water soon after it falls and by moving some water away from neighborhoods faster. By combining the two approaches, instead of just moving water faster away from where it falls, the city hopes to avoid creating new problems downstream, Gramling said.

"We are slowing it down up there and speeding it up down here," he said. "So the effect, we hope, is zero."

Storm protection

The language of storm-water control describes storms based on the volume of rain that falls and the likelihood of that much rain from any single storm. A storm with a 50 percent chance of occurring in any year is a two-year storm. One that has a 2 percent chance of occurring in any year is a 50-year storm.

Environmental issues have boosted the cost of making Arena Park less prone to flooding. Instead of rerouting Arena Creek, the project has changed to construction of a diversion culvert to take excess flows directly to Cape LaCroix Creek, adding $300,000 to the original estimate of $250,000.

Another project, to rebuild 3,200 feet of storm sewers under Margaret Street, has grown in cost from $329,400 to an estimated $1.1 million due to unforeseen engineering difficulties, said Stan Polivick, the city's storm-water coordinator.

"The system that is in the ground now, we found, is only able to carry a two-year rain event," Polivick said. "To get that neighborhood up to speed is going to take a lot more work than expected."

The drainage problems targeted by the city program are longstanding issues for the neighborhoods involved. Many subdivisions created in the 1960s through the 1980s relied on natural drainage ditches or modest storm sewers to remove water. New subdivisions, however, must be built to move the water from a storm with a 4 percent chance of occurring in any year, what is also known as a 25-year storm, Polivick said.

Along Margaret Street, the new storm sewers will be designed to carry off the rain from a 15-year storm, he said.

"These are chronic problems that have been there for quite some time," Polivick said.

Work that will solve the Dorothy Street drainage problems for the Millers will be done by city crews, but the designs aren't finished and the construction hasn't been scheduled. But just being on the list is a victory, they said, especially after being told initially that the city didn't consider it a public problem.

"As long as they fix it, we are fine with it," Christa Miller said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

388-3642

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Pertinent Addresses:

1112 Dorothy St., Cape Girardeau, Mo.