This is from Jim Ellison, Mayor of Royal Oak as he provides excellent insight into the reasons for yesterdays flooding throughout the Southeast. Though he is speaking from ROs perspective, I would imagine it holds true throughout ... --- I have just returned from a quick tour of the city and am finding that most of the water on the streets has receded. I realize that many people are dealing with flooded basements and yards and I hope that you all are coping as best you can. I wanted to provide a explanation as best as I can regarding how the sewer system is designed and functions. We are on a combined sewer system which means that both storm and sanitary drain into the same lines. In many locations we have installed restrictor catch basins in the street. The purpose of those restrictor basins is to slow down the water that goes into the main system so that drainage enters at a more controlled pace. The water that you see in the streets is by design, supposed to stay there until the main system catches up to the flow. That is to prevent massive amounts of water from entering at once which causes the system to back up. The system is designed to handle what is referred to as a “10 year storm”, in other words a storm that we could expect to experience once every 10 years. The storm we had yesterday has been classified as a “100 Year Storm”, the severity of it unseen ever before in recent history, certainly in my 62 years in this city. We had upwards of 5 inches of rain fall in a very short time, causing the sewer system to back up simply because there was too much water. It is also important to understand that we share the main drainage system, the 12 town drain with all of our surrounding communities adding to the inability of the main system to drain the water quickly enough. So, the system functioned as designed and does function well in most storm events, however, yesterday the storm was very much larger than the design anticipated. A 10 year storm event is the standard for this region and even if the Royal Oak system was designed larger, it still would not do well in this kind of storm unless all of the communities on the 12 town system did that same. As far as personal items damaged in a flood, you can put out all items at the curb at anytime this week and it will be picked up on your regular trash pick up day. We continue to assess what happened and what we can do to mitigate any damage moving forward. --- Thank you Mayor!
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 19:26:33 +0000
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