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Run-off frustrates Girard residents, but responsibility for fixing it is under dispute
By SARAH LEHR
girard
The flooding behind homes on Chrysann Drive has gotten so bad that Craig Sansone has been able to kayak in his backyard. Residents say that after heavy rain, they regularly get 3 to 4 feet of water, and the water, which rushes by at high speeds, is a safety and health risk.
Chrysann Drive is a dead-end road off of Pinecrest Road. The area is in Girard, but under the jurisdiction of Liberty Township.
“We don’t care so much about property damage,” Sansone said. “But, there are little kids on this street that are fascinated by water, and it’s very likely that one of them will drown.”
Bonnie Duffy, another Chrysann Drive resident, said the water is dirty and almost black in color. Her son says whatever’s in the water makes the symptoms of his cystic fibrosis worse.
“The water smells like sewage,” Lynn Hatch, who’s lived on Chyrsann Drive for 15 years, said.
Residents said they’ve never thought to contact health officials about the water, but Sansone said they’d likely try to do so in the future.
Pat Ungaro, Liberty Township administrator, has personally been to Chrysann to witness the flooding. “It’s incredible,” he said. “I’ve hardly seen anything like it.”
However, Ungaro stated unequivocally that the township does not have the authority to solve the issue, since the flooding originates from state Route 11, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Ohio Department of Transportation.
“Unfortunately, we could get into all sorts of trouble if we went onto land that wasn’t ours,” Ungaro said.
Going forward, the township hopes to set up a meeting between ODOT and the residents.
Residents said the flooding started to get serious around 2003 and that every year it gets worse as drain buildup increases. Residents said they first contacted ODOT in 2009 about the problem, which resulted in ODOT’s digging a ditch a few years later. The 1,600-foot ditch is just off of Route 11 and is meant to slow the flow of water toward the bordering woods and eventually toward Chrysann Drive homes. Brent Kovacs, a spokesman for ODOT, said ODOT never dug a ditch, but that instead ODOT “cleared out” a pre-existing ditch in 2008.
Sansone disputes this. “The ditch was never there until we contacted them,” he said. “I saw them digging it with my own eyes.”
Kovacs said that ODOT cannot do anything about the Chrysann flooding because ODOT does not have right of way beyond a fence off the freeway. The ditch that Kovacs said ODOT cleared out is beyond the fence.
Asked why ODOT would have been allowed to clear out the ditch if the ditch was beyond its jurisdiction, Kovacs said: “Regulations change, and we now are more stringent about following regulations.”
“Clearing out that ditch was a matter of being a good neighbor, not because it was our responsibility,” Kovacs said.
Residents said the ditch initially helped slightly, but that it hasn’t been enough. In recent years, they’ve tried to push ODOT to slow the flow of water, but not stop it, since it is not typically permissible to divert the natural flow of water. Kovacs said ODOT would not be able to take responsibility for slowing the water, since the water gets to Route 11 from housing developments, meaning that the problem does not originate with Route 11.
ODOT did have a conference call with residents this summer. “On that call ODOT told me, “We have 100 years of engineering experience in this room, and we don’t have a solution for you,”’ Sansone said.
Mark Finamore, Liberty Township’s law director, said if ODOT is found not to be responsible for the problem, several measures are possible. The county commissioners could step in and create a township ditch. Or, Finamore said, if the problem “isn’t anyone’s fault specifically and is due just to overdevelopment or Mother Nature,” residents could petition to form a storm-water drainage district, which would be similar to the ABC Water District that Austintown, Boardman and Canfield formed in 2009. Such a district, Finamore said, might be paid for by a levy or certain residents might pay a fee based on how much they would benefit from the drainage.
So far, three residents have used their own money to put in culvert pipe in an attempt to alleviate the problem. It didn’t work.
As of now, the water ends up flowing from the backyards back to Route 11. “It makes this loop, which is so stupid,” Sansone said. Sansone believes the solution can be simple, like digging a deeper ditch, filling the existing ditch with broken-up concrete or putting up a retaining wall.
“Everyone’s trying to pass the buck,” he said. “But we’re not reinventing the wheel here.”