(Spirit Lake)– The city of Spirit Lake is vowing to visit with all property owners who have filed complaints with the city over water and sewage back-ups caused by the eight to 10 inches of rain that fell from Monday evening through mid-morning Wednesday.
Mayor Eric Nielsen Wednesday called on city employees to make it a high priority to visit those homeowners who have expressed concerns or complaints with the city.
At a special Noon meeting of the city council Wednesday, Nielsen and several council members said they’ve been getting a lot of phone calls from people upset over the situation.
And the timing couldn’t be worse as far as the city is concerned. The council met in special session Wednesday as the trustees of Drainage District 22 and officially levied assessments for the project, which consisted in part of the construction of several detention ponds. The heavy rains caused those ponds to overflow their banks. Two of them…one near Hy-Vee and another near the Great Lakes Mall, flooded a portion of Highways nine and 71 awhile Wednesday morning.
Many property owners have already expressed concern over the amount of assessments they’re being forced to pay for the drainage project. And now that they’ve been flooded even after the project has been completed, their frustration is mounting. But Paul Petiti, an engineer with the Jacobson-Westergard firm that engineered the detention ponds, says the ponds simply aren’t designed to handle the seven inches plus of rain that fell within 36 hours. He described it as a 300-year rain. Instead, Petiti says, the ponds are designed to handle a 100-year flood event. Petiti says trying to build a system that would handle seven to ten inches of rain in a 36-hour period simply wouldn’t be affordable. He says it isn’t common practice for cities to build a system for an event that happens only once or twice every 300 years.
Water levels have receded considerably as of mid-morning today (Thursday), and clean-up is continuing, with some homeowners in the southern part of Spirit Lake reporting significant property damage.
Meanwhile, as the result of action taken over the noon hour Wednesday by the council, many of those same homeowners can expect a special assessment in the mail to pay for their share of the drainage district 22 project. A total of 4,470,949-dollars is being assessed for the main part of project. Assessments for work done to a branch line total an additional 719-thousand dollars. Property owners will have up to 20 years to pay the assessments at an annual interest rate of 8.25 percent.
