At 3 a.m. May 13—midway through last week’s four-inch deluge of rain—Kevin Murray, the owner of Val’s Famous Pizzas & Grinders at 112 S. 11th St., made a dash to his business to see how the alley behind his restaurant was faring.

At that point, pretty well: a couple of inches of water, no more, Murray told the Chesterton Stormwater Management Board at its meeting Monday night. “The drain was handling it,” he said. So Murray went home and back to bed.

A few hours later, though, Murray got a call from an employee with the bad news: the couple of inches of water in the alley had become three and a half feet in the basement of the restaurant.

Then, earlier on Monday, he got a call from his insurance adjuster with the worst news: “They’re not going to cover it,” Murray told the board.

“I don’t even know what to ask or say,” he said. “I’m kind of screwed. I need some help. I’m probably going to lose $3,000 in food and consumables. I can’t afford to do this every time. Two years ago we had a 100-year rain. Now we’ve got another one. I need some help.”

The alley in question—in fact the lowest point in town—tends to catch stormwater like a funnel and in heavy rains is prone to serious flooding, a problem which the board believed it was on the verge of solving last year with the design of a lift station capable of pumping runoff from the alley to a stormwater system tie-in to the south. The board even went so far as to pay a property owner in the neighborhood $2,235 for an easement on which to install the lift station. But then, in September, the bids for the project came in, the lowest of which—around $139,000—was roughly double the estimated cost. At that point the board tabled the project.

Town Engineer Mark O’Dell noted that the town has applied for federal moneys for the project through the offices of both U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-1st, and U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and that he’s hopeful something will come of those applications.

For his part Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg suggested the possibility of down-engineering the proposed lift station to make it more affordable.

“Anything you can do,” Murray said. “A sensor connected to an automatic dialer. Even if it’s just a little Briggs & Stratton pump mounted on a pallet I have to fire up myself.”

Clerk-Treasurer Gayle Polakowski did say that once Schnadenberg and O’Dell have filed an incident reporting on the alley flooding, she’ll file it with Anton Insurance Agency.

Murray took a moment to express his appreciation to Schnadenberg and his crew, who were already on site on May 13 pumping the alley when Murray returned to the restaurant.

In other business, members mulled the possibility of making a funding contribution to a ditch project planned by the Porter County Drainage Board in the area of C.R. 1050N and C.R. 200W.

That project would re-route a water flow now going southwest into the Abercrombie Woods subdivision to its historically intended destination, east and north into the Gustafson Ditch, O’Dell told the board. It would also be of significant benefit to Chesterton residents who live in the area.

Members seemed amenable to contributing $50,000 to the project—O’Dell estimated roughly the whole thing might cost around $200,000—but before they committed anything they want a formal request from the county, a hard cost estimate, and a formal project scope.

O’Dell said that he would communicate that to the county.

“I think there should be some memorandum of agreement so you know what you’re getting into before you get into it,” Parkinson said.

Posted 5/19/2010