When 5.5 inches of rain fell Thursday morning, drainage improvement projects proved their worth by limiting damage in Pea Ridge.
“I got a call about 6 a.m. from Police Officer Chris Richards about debris in the roads,” city Street Department Superintendent Nathan See said Friday, a day after the storm hit. “We went out to where we know we always have problem spots. But this time we had roads that we didn’t know we had issues with, but they were damaged.”
Ross Salvage Road, which has not been a problem site, has a 2-foot-wide erosion ditch across it.
A couple of culverts on Greer Street washed out.
The bridge on Green Street near Arkansas Highway 72 had a bit of undermining that will have to be repaired.
The 5.5 inches registered on Street Department employee Tom Sheets’ rain gauge.
“When I went out I was expecting big damage, but we didn’t have it,” See said.
See said that damage would have been much worse had it not been for the drainage improvement projects done over the past couple of years.
“People get mad sometimes when we’re out digging out ditches,” See said. “But when those projects stop flooding - they’re thanking us.”
The worst flooding in the city that the Street Department dealt with was where Peck Street crosses Little Sugar Creek on the Big Sugar Golf Course. Large logs and limbs collected on the upstream side of the bridge, creating a dam. A city backhoe pulled logs from the logjam, then dropped them on the downstream side.
“We went back two hours later and it was jammed up again, so we cleaned it again,” See said. That went on every couple of hours until mid afternoon, when the flood began to subside. He noted that the water rose about six or seven feet from its normal level. At the bridge, the creek stayed inside its banks, but in places where the valley broadens into floodplains it spread out.
“When you get that much water in a couple of hours, it’s got to go some where,” See noted. The ditches and small creeks quickly fill,but generally empty out quickly, too. Larger creeks, fed by the smaller creeks, take longer to subside.
“I was out looking for damage like we had in the flood of 2008 or 2009, but really didn’t find it,” See said. “We’ve done a lot to upgrade our drainage, but it’s hard to see - until this. Then you look at it and say, ‘Yeah, that worked good.’”
He noted that a man on Price Street told him the ditch in front of his house had not been cleaned for four decades, and he always had ponding in his yard.
“I went by and looked, it didn’t pond, proving that it pays off to do (ditch) maintenance before it’s a problem.”
Repairing damage from Thursday’s flood doesn’t present a problem or money drain for the city because all the work will be fixed by city crews rather than contractors.
“We can handle this, no problem - this didn’t cause huge damage,” See said.
News, Pages 1 on 04/24/2013