Stories indexed with the term ‘storm water management’

Cecilia Sauter’s rain garden solved the problem of a wet and mushy side yard at her Ann Arbor home and may have helped her neighbor with water in her house’s foundation. Greg Marker, of Ypsilanti, uses a rain garden to hold runoff from three sump pumps and his house’s gutters, which resolves some water problems with his neighbors who live down the hill from him.

I just wanted to get rid of some lawn.

The thread that ties the three of us together is that we got help from Washtenaw County’s Office of Water Resources Commissioner (formerly the Drain Commissioner), which provided us with rain garden designs and helped us buy the native plants called for by the plans. The county’s program started in 2005, and so far it’s helped set up about 50 rain gardens.  [Full Story]

No one attending last month’s public meeting at Lawton Elementary looked happy to be there. Nor were they happy about the prospect of holes being dug in their basement and front yard. “My wife and I have lived in our house 30 years and never had a drop of water in the basement,” one man said. “Do I really need this?”

“This” is a citywide program to disconnect the footing drains in all houses from the sanitary sewer system. And the answer to his question is “yes” – because the city mandates it.

Much like the sidewalk replacement program, the effort to disconnect footing drains will span several years. But unlike the sidewalk replacement, which homeowners must pay for, the city is reimbursing costs of the drain disconnect – at least for now.

The program started in 2001 as a way to deal with chronic sewer backups in basements of some residential neighborhoods, caused during storms when stormwater would flood that sewer system. In older homes, footing drains – which are designed to divert ground water away from a house’s foundation – were often connected to the sanitary sewer system. With heavy rains, the system didn’t have the capacity to handle the additional rainwater. Sewage would back up into basements through floor drains. It wasn’t pretty [Full Story]

There was grumbling among some residents before the meeting even started: “They’re going to do what they’re going to do, it’s already a done deal.”

But the half-dozen city staffers who met with neighbors at Forsythe Middle School last Wednesday presented a variety of different options for how the resurfacing of Miller Avenue between Maple and Newport roads could be undertaken. Construction on the project could begin as soon as 2010, but far more likely is a 2011 start, according to project manager Nick Hutchinson, who’s a civil engineer with the city.

Some irritations from neighbors did surface in the course of the meeting. But reached by phone after the meeting, Hutchinson said he thought it was a healthy exchange and that the project team had been able to collect a lot of useful information. [Full Story]