City looking for solutions, funds

By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

It will be some time yet before residents of 24 homes in the Ginger Cake Creek flood plain see any relief.

“It's going to take probably several years to implement [several flood prevention projects],” Fayetteville city engineer Don Easterbrook told City Council in preparation for Monday's council meeting.

But owners of about 20 homes currently listed as in the flood plain will get a break by no longer being required to have flood insurance, Easterbrook said.

Consultant Don Moore recently completed an analysis of flooding along the creek, showing that the flood plain map for the area is inaccurate.

City Council Monday approved submitting a letter of map revision to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Once FEMA revises its flood insurance rate map for the area, those homeowners can drop their flood insurance if they like, Easterbrook said.

But Moore's study also identified 24 homes within the flood plain, some with only footings or crawl spaces in the flood zone, and still others with flood plain as high as six feet above basement floors.

“Although we probably cannot lower the flood plain enough to get all the homes out of the flood plain, we may be able to make improvements that will reduce the number of emergency calls and reduce the severity of any flooding that does occur,” Easterbrook said in a written report to council.

Modifications to City Lake and Pye Lake, so they can hold back more water when storms occur, and channel improvements to the creek itself are needed to lower the flood plain, Easterbrook said, but the projects are expensive, and the city hasn't budgeted any money for them.

Council members told Easterbrook to present the projects in order of priority during the council's planning retreat this fall so they can consider them in budgeting for 2001 and beyond.

Federal hazard mitigation programs may provide some grant money for some of the projects, Easterbrook said.

Engineer: Regulations aren't final answer

By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

Fayetteville City Council members want to know how 24 homes wound up in the Ginger Cake Creek flood plain, and they want to be sure such a thing doesn't happen again.

“How did these homes get built in the flood plain, and does our ordinance sufficiently identify flood plains so it doesn't happen again?” Councilman Kenneth Steele wanted to know after city engineer Don Easterbrook reported on the results of a flood plain study recently.

The creek enters the city near Hood Avenue and Waterworks Road, and runs south through the west side of town. Most of the affected homes are in the Hood Avenue area, and the flooding is exacerbated by tributaries entering Ginger Cake from City Lake and Pye Lake, two small lakes in the area.

When the area was developed, Easterbrook said, it's likely that flood plain maps in use at the time weren't up to date. “The older maps showed a much smaller flood plain,” he said. “The channel keeps getting more and more overgrown,” increasing the size of the flood plain, he added.

Causes are natural as well as man-made, he told The Citizen this week. The flood plain changes through natural evolution of the creek, but also because of development.

Planners and engineers have gotten better at spotting potential problems, and city ordinances now require better detention ponds for new development to prevent flooding.

But several homes are in danger of flooding because they are beneath Pye Lake's dam, and that situation is out of the purview of city engineering regulations, Easterbrook said.

“There's a threat if the dam should fail,” he said, but the catch 22 for regulators is that the owner of land above the dam had a right to build the dam, and owners of land below it have a right to develop their property.

“It's property rights versus protection,” he said.

Those conflicting rights have to be dealt with in the political realm, not the regulatory one, he added.