If you live on 21st or 23rd street in Chesterton, you have the stormwater bond issue of 2000 to thank for the fact that your neighborhood is a good bit drier than it used to be.

If you make frequent use of the northern stretch of the sidewalk along 23rd Street—from the Prairie Duneland Trail to Peterson Ditch—you also have that stormwater bond issue to thank.

But the last payment on that issue—$885,000, to be exact—is due in February 2012, and there are places in town still in need of some drainage. A lot of drainage.

And it was with those places in mind that Town Council Member Sharon Darnell, D-4th, floated the idea of another bond at Monday’s meeting of the Stormwater Management Board.

Darnell made that suggestion—and at the moment it’s no more than a suggestion—while Town Engineer Mark O’Dell was speaking of the costs of remedying the 11th Street problem: the alley behind Val’s Famous Pizza & Grinders at 112 S. 11th St., and the alley behind the First Christian Church at 1110 W. Porter Ave., both of which are subject to flooding during heavy rain events. The flooding of the alley by Val’s—the lowest point in town—is doubly problematic, moreover, because the water there overwhelms a sanitary sewer in the alley, contributing by a factor of thousands of gallons to the occasional combined sewage overflow.

Even a stripped down lift station at the Val’s site is likely to cost around $116,000, while a similar solution at the church site could cost as much as $90,000.

For Darnell one possible way to get the work done without tapping the Cumulative Sewer Fund would be to float another stormwater bond when the 2000 issue expires early in 2012. “Do a comprehensive project all at one time,” she said. “Let’s start putting some stormwater bond projects together.”

“That’s an option,” O’Dell agreed.

In the end, however, the board by consensus asked O’Dell to pursue an alternative: phasing the project by installing in the first year a lift station at Val’s: in the next year, say, the pipe leading from Val’s and the church to a stormwater line on Lincoln Ave.; and in the last year the lift station at the church. In this way, the thinking goes, the work would be done in more manageable bite-size chunks.

In other business, O’Dell reported on his and Street Commisioner John Schnadenberg’s investigation of the stormwater system in the Western Acres subdivision, where Idaho Street floods during big rains.

The results of that investigation: indeterminate. The ditch which drains Western Acres and leads to the Peterson Ditch is unobstructed, and a videotaping of the 15-inch culverts themselves indicate that they too are clear. O’Dell did find the end of a culvert to be crushed in the area of Idaho and 24th Street but that would in no way cause the problem and is easily fixed, he said.

A solution does present itself, O’Dell suggested: up-piping the culverts to 18-inch, at an estimated cost, though, of $78,000.

O’Dell did point to one other possibility that the videotaping wouldn’t have identified: perhaps one of the culverts is bowed somewhere in the middle, that is, that over time it’s shifted in the ground, and while at either end is perfectly level somewhere between the pipe has been raised, creating a chokepoint in the flow.

The flooding only happens in heavy rain events, O’Dell noted, but inasmuch as “the frequency of intense rains has increased a lot in 2009 and 2010,” that fact probably doesn’t come as much comfort to the folks who live on Idaho Street.

The board took no action.

Members did vote 3-0 to approve a memo of understanding with the Porter County Drainage Board, under which the Chesterton Stormwater Utility will contribute $50,000 toward the cost of the Drainage Board’s construction of Gustafson Ditch Arm No. 1 and Lateral No. 1 in the area of C.R. 1050N and C.R. 200W in Liberty Township. Although a county project, it will benefit Chesterton residents who live in that area.

The Stormwater Utility ran a deficit in July of $5,821 and in the year-to-date is running a deficit of $2,175

Posted 8/18/2010