Trustees hear flooding complaints

Trustees said they do address flooding problems.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- A Rasberry Lane couple and a Baker Street man told township trustees that storm-water runoff is causing problems in their neighborhoods.
Karen Daff and David Conkey, who own the house at 1294 Rasberry, said their back yard is inundated with water that surges 30 feet to 40 feet from a ditch in a township easement behind their property during a rain.
The water is coming from pipes that drain water from a retention pond next to their property. The pond collects runoff from nearby neighborhoods. Another pipe drains water from a development off County Line Road.
Daff said the retention pond is not being maintained. Adding to the problem, she said, are neighbors who have tried to stop the water from flooding out of the easement ditch by damming it up before it gets to their property. The water has nowhere to go but into her yard, she said.
Daff said she is frustrated because she has been trying to get the problem resolved for four months with no results. The township sent her a letter March 14 telling her the easement would be cleared in a month, she said, but nothing has been done.
The letter was from township Administrator Michael Dockry, who was not at the meeting. Trustees said they want to check with him to see how far along he is toward correcting the problem.
Trustees' response
During what was at times a heated discussion, Trustee Bo Pritchard told Daff the township can't correct a problem like hers overnight. "Four months is not an unusual amount of time," he said.
Trustees said they spend a lot of time trying to correct flooding issues, working with funding from grants.
"It may seem we're insensitive [to flooding problems] but we're really not," said Trustee David Ditzler. "The No. 1 priority is to get water out of structures."
Harry Daff, who lives on Baker Street, told trustees water runoff also is a problem in his neighborhood.
He said runoff from development on Mahoning Avenue and state Route 46 is directed to the storm sewers on Baker, which can't handle all the water. He said that the sewers back up and that water ran like a river between his garage and his neighbor's yard.