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County addressing flooding issues in Poland
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Vindicator photo.About a year ago, Township resident Diane Matuz launched a renewed campaign to get flooding problems that have deluged her North Lima Road neighborhood addressed. She believes work by the sanitary engineer’s office is a step in the direction to fix the problems.
By DENISE DICK
About a year after township resident Diane Matuz launched a renewed campaign to resolve flooding problems that have deluged her North Lima Road neighborhood, she believes Mahoning County is taking steps to address the issues.
After water flowed into the basement of the home Matuz and her husband, Ray, share last June, she began collecting signatures from fellow residents dealing with similar problems.
“It’s been a whole year, and I wanted to see what was accomplished,” Matuz said.
At a township meeting last month, county officials including Robert Lyden, interim sanitary engineer, and Commissioner Anthony Traficanti, updated the work being done.
Lyden showed where his office installed caps to prevent stormwater from infiltrating the sanitary sewer system.
Those can’t be installed everywhere, Lyden explained, because of the danger presented if methane gas would build up. The holes in manhole covers allow the gas to vent, he said.
“We also offered to do dye-testing,” Lyden said.
That would enable residents and the county to determine if residents’ roof drains and downspouts are properly connected and go out to the street or a ditch.
In older neighborhoods, some of those drains are tied to the sanitary sewer system. During heavy rain, the sanitary system gets overwhelmed with the volume of stormwater and flooding or sewer backups can result. Sanitary lines generally have a smaller capacity than those for stormwater.
If dye testing showed that a resident’s roof drains weren’t properly connected, it would be the resident’s responsibility to correct it, Lyden said.
“Not a single person at that meeting took us up on the offer for dye-testing,” he said.
Matuz said she and her husband have taken all of the precautions they can at their home to guard against water coming in, but it’s still a problem.
Their roof drains aren’t connected to the sanitary system. They have a sump pump, and they have an automatic back-water valve.
“Even if they [the Matuzes] do, if a lot of others in the neighborhood don’t, they could still have water,” Lyden said.
The sanitary engineer’s office offers assistance in the installation of the valves for those who don’t have them. The device keeps stormwater from entering the sanitary sewer system.
“We pay half the cost of installing this type of valve up to $2,500,” Lyden said.
More information about that program is available by calling the office at 330-793-5514.
Matuz said county officials told her they want to pursue federal-stimulus funds to address some of the problems.
“It’s encouraging because they actually have some ideas” to address the issues, she said.