General
FROM LAURA—the email that kicked off the blog
Hi Guys,
Hi Guys,
A few of us were saying yesterday that it might be useful to have some form of neighborhood communication, though we weren't sure what the best form might be: email list serve? google blog website? something else? I'm not super tech savvy though. I have made a list of the neighbors emails that I have, but I know I am missing quite a few. Feel free to tell me addresses to add to the list. A few things we were saying might be useful for discussion:
- Did people get money from insurance, and any helpful hints on that?
- For closing up basement windows, is glass block a good idea? (Two of us have received different advice from different basement waterproofers.)
- Are sewer backflow valves helpful or harmful? (Again, different ideas on this were "floating" around.)
Also, there was a village hall meeting yesterday about the floods that some people attended. To me it felt a bit like they wanted to portray the situation as one such that there wasn't really anything they could do to prevent this kind of thing in the future. (I may be overly sensitive.) They had an engineer out to explain it, and he then emailed his presentation afterwards to those who were interested. You can find it attached.
Page 4 has a super cool picture of what areas were flooded. Looking at page 2 which shows our current storm sewer system made me confused.
- A bunch of the sewer pipes in our neighborhood are colored light green which the legend states means unknown diameter. How can we think about what needs to be done if we don't know the diameter of the current pipes? This includes the pipes on lower Shorewood, the pipes on upper Columbia, and the pipes that start just east of the pool.
- Thin dark green pipes are "minor" in diameter, with the Swarthmore and lower Columbia pipes being designated minor.
- An X represents "pipe end" and there is one of those at University and Farley.
- There are very few storm drain inlets on Columbia or Swarthmore.
I'm not an engineer (though at least three of you are), so maybe these things are normal and not worrying, but I throw them out there in case anyone has any thoughts.
If you are not already signed up for village blast emails, you might want to do so. Instructions here: https://www.shorewood-hills.org/index.asp?SEC={DEFBC034-9586-4B36-82DE-BE6D40A4D848}&Type=QUICKFORM
Thanks!
Laura
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:
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Flood Status Board Meeting Presentation
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Date:
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Thu, 06 Sep 2018 17:45:33 +0000
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From:
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Sherry Irving <sherry@tcengineers.net>
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To:
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'beilinonrye@gmail.com' <beilinonrye@gmail.com>, 'akaiksow@hotmail.com' <akaiksow@hotmail.com>, 'mandel01@gmail.com' <mandel01@gmail.com>, 'momal97@gmail.com' <momal97@gmail.com>, 'blfrenz@gmail.com' <blfrenz@gmail.com>, 'tdegen@tds.net' <tdegen@tds.net>, 'ayhford@yahoo.com' <ayhford@yahoo.com>, 'santhia@charter.net' <santhia@charter.net>, 'ahelsley@wisc.edu' <ahelsley@wisc.edu>, 'thomawsr@gmail.com' <thomawsr@gmail.com>, 'laurajohnay@gmail.com' <laurajohnay@gmail.com>, 'lschechter@wisc.edu' <lschechter@wisc.edu>, 'jmittmoen@shorewood-hills.org' <jmittmoen@shorewood-hills.org>, 'achapin@shorewood-hills.org' <achapin@shorewood-hills.org>, 'dsykes@shorewood-hills.org' <dsykes@shorewood-hills.org>, 'kfrantz@shorewood-hills.org' <kfrantz@shorewood-hills.org>
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CC:
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Brian Berquist <brian@tcengineers.net>
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Per Brian Berquist, P.E.
Sherry
Sherry A. H. Irving
Town & Country Engineering, Inc.
2912 Marketplace Drive, Suite 103
Madison, WI 53719
(608) 273-3350 Fax: (608) 273-3391
Comments
Thanks so much for providing the update! I would lean towards something other than email, just so it is easier to have conversations about specific topics.
I have one tip on insurance. Talk about it as sewer back up and focus on the items that "would have" been damaged with about two feet of water. This can still include furnaces, water heaters, clean-up/sanitization & removal of drywall and flooring. If the conversation goes towards ground water coming in, just confirm that at some point water may have started to commingle with the water from the backup, but that the damage had already (still would have) happened. We have had success with State Farm so far. Note, this is because we do carry a sewer back-up/sump pump failure clause.
I will take a look at the presentation this weekend but would admit I am probably not the right person to answer your questions on the sewer system.
@Chris I imagine you will be able to help verify the engineer's commentary here? I would like to ensure they are also exploring possible longterm investments about that could help take on the excess water that came with this event, when the sewer systems would go beyond its capacity. I have concerns about the utilization fo park behind our house since it seems to be under water quite a bit (is this normal for previous summers). I also wonder if there is a better place/way to direct the sewer overflow...away from the homes and businesses...to more natural areas that can collect and absorb the water.
I don't have any real ideas yet, but could be convinced to research it a bit more. OR try to get some enigneering students to take it on as a class project :)
Kyle
Hello All,
I am adding my neighbor, Mary Morton, to this thread as well as Trista and Yaniv who own the yellow house across from Mary. My house is located at the bottom of Swarthmore Court (907 Swarthmore Ct) just next to the pool. My entire ground floor was flooded and we had two cars totaled. Insurance is covering the cars but I have not been successful in filing a claim for the house.
Communication and organized effort to push for mitigation of future floods is key - thank you, Laura, for taking the initiative to start the conversation. Like Laura, my takeaway from Thursday morning’s meeting was a sense from the engineer that no matter what mitigation Shorewood might have had in place, with a rain like we had on 08/20/18 nothing would have prevented the flooding we experienced in our homes. On Wednesday evening prior to this meeting, I met with Brian Berquist and we walked around Swarthmore and Columbia and discussed where the water from the flooding came from (primarily Madison), how it entered the Village (different points depending on location within the village), where it wanted to go (there was a current taking debris eastwards to the pool until it had nowhere to go), and where the current engineering on Swarthmore/Purdue/(Columbia, too?) is set up for it to go (the storm drains on Purdue and Swarthmore lead to piping taking the water back to the ‘swale’ - the ditch running on the north side of the railroad tracks that is meant to be a water containment system holding the water until it can be absorbed into the ground). My understanding of Brian’s explanation is that the piping below the streets on Purdue and Swarthmore only direct water back to this swale and not to a larger storm drainage system. If my understanding is correct, once the swale is full, the under-street pipes become holding tanks for the water until the water absorbs into the ground and then of course once it’s all full, we will experience flooding.
When I met with Brian, I brought up with him the flooding that happened on Swarthmore/Purdue on June 15th/16th that caused the pool to be closed temporarily and the swim meet between Shorewood and Ridgewood to be moved from Shorewood to Ridgewood. While that rain and subsequent flooding did not impact my house, the flooding did encroach upon my driveway and the lawn closest to Purdue/Shorewood as it leads to the pool. I don’t know if this flooding impacted other residents in the neighborhood. I also discussed with him some ideas of my own and ideas I’ve heard from neighbors for mitigation to prevent future flooding - he seemed receptive - and showed him that the railroad company, while restoring their tracks, failed to remove the gravel detritus caused by the flash flood washing out the tracks that remains in the swale, thereby reducing its ability to hold larger volumes of water. I feel this needs to be immediately addressed as this swale seems to be our primary mitigation for flooding and its ability to perform is now diminished.
In terms of ongoing communication/discussion I suggest either a private blog or a private Facebook page be created. I suggest private not because I believe anything can actually be guaranteed to be private, but if we are discussing financial compensation/strategy, private seems smarter to me than readily public. I think a blog would be easier to organize by topic as long as anyone originating a discussion were careful to categorize the discussion correctly.
Gloria Beach
608-293-3108
I strongly support the formation of an ad hoc committee to address the Village's stormwater management systems and how they might or might not be able to prevent future flooding similar to what we experienced on 08/20/18 and 06/15 and 06/16/18.
https://www.shorewood-hills.org/index.asp?SEC=A848E0A4-EC0B-4C61-90D1-0A6FEC9E7CDA&DE=C8A4C594-319A-4733-A0FD-C713B0915617&Type=B_BASIC
Gloria Beach
608-293-3108