Posted on August 29, 2016
By Nora Olabi, The Courier
Panorama Village may consider dredging retention ponds to protect the city from future floods after the April deluge inundated about 80 homes.
The city contracted with the civil engineering firm Bleyl and Associates, which specializes in municipal water infrastructure projects, weeks after the Tax Day floods. The firm is in the process of preparing permitting paperwork for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge a large retention pond along Stewart Creek, an engineer from Bleyl and Associates said during a council meeting Aug. 23, since the creek is federally regulated. Separately, the city may dredge another pond upstream from Lake Panorama.
“We’re having internal discussions in our office and with one of our environmental companies that’s working with the Army Corps,” said Travis Walker, a graduate engineer with Bleyl and Associates and a resident of Panorama Village. “We’re looking at different (permitting) options.”
Dredging another body of water wasn’t originally in the cards, but Mayor Lynn Scott suggested it as a long-term solution.
“There was no retention pond ever considered until I went to a FEMA meeting, and I learned we could get that retention pond built,” Scott said.
The city anticipates the cost will be reimbursed by FEMA as part of a list of more than $270,000 worth of damages to the city during the April floods. But with the historic floods in Louisiana between Aug. 8 and 14 that dumped 7.1 trillion gallons on the Baton Rouge area, leaving at least 13 dead and more than 600,000 homes destroyed, the city is unsure when it could receive financial assistance.
“There’s a lot of FEMA work going on right now in Louisiana, and we don’t know when we’re going to get some of that money back,” said Mayor Pro-Tem John Langley, who oversees the city’s drainage system.
A timeline for the completion of the drainage study hasn’t been set, and receiving approval from the Army Corps of Engineers could take months after submitting paperwork. But Scott is confident that whatever the firm’s recommendations are will be right for the community.
“They’re being very careful and doing their due diligence rather than doing it hastily. We have our ultimate faith in them, and they have a tremendous reputation among the cities that they serve. We trust them, and when they finally get the figures and the solution, it’s going to be the right one,” Scott said.
The city hasn’t conducted a drainage plan since 2002 and had not maintained its open ditch system for years, which became overgrown and clogged.
“They had not been maintained for several years. … We never had a problem. Out of sight, out of mind,” Langley said. “Everything has to be taken into consideration before we start (improvements).”
Residents hit hardest include those living near the intersection of Cherry Hills Drive and Hanover Lane, near holes 1 and 27 on the golf course, and the corner of Indian Wells Lane and Colebrook Lane.
Although the drainage study has yet to be completed, preliminary recommendations have included clearing and maintenance of ditches, building berms, repairing the concrete beneath East Fork White Oak Creek and working with Conroe to ensure development near Panorama Village won’t create additional drainage issues in the future.
East Fork White Oak Creek is another federally maintained body of water, and the city has received approval to begin work replacing the soil and repairing the creek.
Progress has been slow moving in part because the city’s utility department, which handles water and sewer maintenance, is composed of only three people.
The flooding comes less than two years after Panorama Village began dredging Lake Panorama. At that time, the city was worried about the historic drought sweeping the state, where wildfires had burnt 1.5 million acres in 2011 alone. The city’s heart – its lush green golf course – was at stake since water from the lake was used to water the course.
After a series of talks that spanned from 2011-14, the city posed an $850,000 bond referendum that was approved in May 2014 to deepen and dredge the lake.
But the April floods deposited additional sediment that settled in Lake Panorama, which over time may reduce the volume of water held in the lake. The city is considering whether dredging upstream from the lake would keep sediment from flowing into Lake Panorama and instead settling in the small retention pond.
While Panorama Village anticipates its proposed operating budget for 2016-17 will have about an additional $90,000 in revenue, much of which will go to drainage and infrastructure repairs, the city is considering long-term solutions.
To maintain the city’s drainage system into the future, Scott previously proposed creating an ordinance to enact a municipal drainage utility system to collect drainage fees for maintenance purposes. Those discussions were tabled in June while council members waited for the drainage study to conclude.
Scott is consulting with legislators on state law for establishing the drainage utility system and hopes to rally support.
“I still want to consider it. There are some questions about who should pay for it. … I believe everybody that is a property owner benefits, not just the people who have flooded or will flood,” Scott said.
Source: The Courier
