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Boardman residents express flooding frustration
Homeowner: ‘We’re losing our property’
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County commissioners heard from Boardman residents who said Tuesday’s heavy storm and flooding is just part of the township’s tidal cycle.
“I suggest that we do some riverboat gambling things because we could probably bring in a lot of money that way,” Bobbi Terwilliger of Applewood Boulevard said during a commissioners meeting Thursday morning.
She said she’s spent about $5,000 within the past year to drain her yard, but that money ultimately gets flushed.
“[Flooding] is constant. It’s continuous,” she said. “Fortunately, I don’t need to put in an in-ground pool.”
Mike Sprague of Holbrook Road said his and others’ township properties take on water after any sizable rainfall, and it’s been that way for at least 15 years. He recalled during previous floods wading through high water with garbage bags taped to his legs, trying to reach sump-pump breakers and thinking to himself, “Does God really like me today?”
On Tuesday, he said he asked himself whether he should save his dead mother’s plates or family photos of his kids – or just “get the hell out of the house.”
“Who oversees Boardman Township to make sure they’re doing what they’re doing? Because we’re losing our property,” he said.
Dennis O’Hara, the county’s Emergency Management Agency director, said nearly a dozen damage assessment teams have surveyed storm damage along 27 streets in Boardman and Canfield townships and had planned to move through Boardman and Poland townships Thursday.
The county must show Ohio EMA that at least 25 homes or businesses have sustained “major” damage or are considered destroyed – 40 percent of which must be uninsured – to qualify homeowners for low-interest loans to pay for cleanup efforts. Mahoning County, however, has never qualified for relief funding through the state in his 13 years with the agency, he said.
Repairing Tuesday’s storm damage likely will fall squarely on homeowners.
“As a homeowner, having water in my basement would be a major emergency for me, and we’re very sympathetic to that, but we have to follow the guidelines set by [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], and those guidelines are very high,” O’Hara said.
Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti said though county municipalities could “probably” have done more in the past to prevent stormwater runoff, the relief guidelines could better account for people living with chronic flooding.
“I see no help coming from that part of our government,” Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said. “What we need is a target, we need a plan. We don’t have anything we’re going to throw the money into.”
Weather Underground’s Boardman Applewood weather station reported an unofficial 3.64 inches of rain in just 3 hours Tuesday. The Canfield Brookpark station had 4.5 inches in that same time. By FEMA guidelines, an average 3 inches of rain in three hours happens once every 500 years, said Boardman Township Administator Jason Loree.
The low-lying Boardman Plaza, which was entirely submerged Tuesday night, used to be a pond holding water for a farmer’s crops, he said. He said stormwater management engineering plans weren’t required for property development until after the 1980s.
“Looking at places like the [Southern Park] mall, places like the Boardman Plaza, some of the older business developments and some of the older homes – none of that stormwater management and planning was there,” he said. “Honestly, if it could have been done 20 years ago, it would have been great. That’s not what the trustees 20 years ago were dealing with.”
Loree said the concept of a stormwater control district is a “new concept” in this area, being approved by the state only within the past 15 years. ABC Water and Storm Water District has begun collecting property assessments to fund stormwater infrastructure upgrades in Boardman and Canfield just this year.
Though Boardman’s wastewater treatment plant is designed to treat 3.3 million gallons of wastewater a day, readings from this week put it at 20 million gallons, said William Coleman, office manager for the Mahoning County Sanitary Engineer.
“The sanitary sewers are not designed to transport and treat stormwater,” Coleman said. “Austintown and Boardman have changed so dramatically with development and growth – it’s trying to keep up with that.
“When you see what happened to the Boardman Plaza – where did that come from? What isn’t working? Where is ‘ground zero’ that would allow that to happen?”
Coleman said his office received more calls Thursday about sanitary systems backing up into residents’ basements due to surging stormwater.
“We encourage people in these older neighborhoods ... consider removing downspouts and putting in a sump pit with the sump pump and consider putting in a gate valve,” many of which close automatically when waters rise to a certain level, he said.
Sump-pump systems can run between $2,500 to $3,500, but the county will pick up to half the cost for Mahoning Valley Sanitary District customers, Coleman said. Only about 600 of the district’s 40,000 customers have taken advantage of it in the past 25 years, the majority of whom live in Boardman, he said.
Today is forecasted to be dry with temperatures ranging from the mid-70s to low 50s, according to meteorologist Eric Wilhelm of 21 WFMJ-TV, The Vindicator’s broadcast partner.
Showers and storms are expected to return by Saturday afternoon, but likely not in as many numbers as earlier this week, he said.
“We finally get a chance to dry out Sunday afternoon through Monday and Tuesday, so that will be a welcome stretch of dry weather,” Wilhelm said.