FLOOD ASSURANCE
Last
Soon enough, two feet of floodwater had crept into the house, soaking walls, floors, beds and, painfully, the antique furniture that once belonged to his grandmother. The worst part? Calvert and his wife had just finished redoing everything after a 2013 flood. The brand-new kitchen cabinets, wood floors, bathroom tile and A7C unit? All that's inside now is the ceiling and some drywall. When I talk to Calvert nine months later, he and his wife are still living with his mother. "In the past two years," he says, "I've only lived in my house for a total of a year."
The 30-year-old does water-damage restoration for a living and has traveled throughout the country drying out soggy buildings, wet from leaky pipes, broken washing machines and floods. (He was able to dry out the antique furniture before it warped and plans to restore it.) He bought the house in 2007, knowing it was in the floodplain, but says that, to his knowledge, the house had not flooded before. After the
Calvert is one of thousands whose homes were damaged by the record April rain, which dumped eight inches in less than 12 hours in some parts. The so-called "100-year flood" has a 1 percent chance of happening on any given year. Its flow rate, which indicates the levels that rivers and streams can reach in normally dry areas, is mapped out to show the floodplain, which includes parts of
Appropriately named councilwoman
Following the April storm, the mayor pulled together a flood-mitigation work group to figure out what to do about homes that repeatedly flood. Dozens of homeowners in the floodplain applied for permits with MSD to fix their homes after receiving relief checks from
The 2006 ordinance had good intentions. Since the early '90s,
The work group, consisting of MSD officials and
The initial lack of preparedness on the part of the city and MSD following the high-volume April shower seemed more like what you might expect if we'd had an earthquake. But
Compared with other cities along the river,
Two decades later, after another, less destructive river flood in 1945, the
MSD didn't take over Louisville's stormwater management until 1985, when the agency inherited issues that its officials are still working on today, such as the combined stormwater and sanitation system that's underneath many of the neighborhoods inside 1-264.
Recent floods, such as the two Calvert and his family endured, are reminders that you don't have to be near the river to get flooded. It can flood almost anywhere in town if it rains enough. And climate-change studies indicate this will become a more common headache. In
An
You might assume, knowing what we know now, that new development in the floodplain would be prohibited. It's not. "We have a lot of development in
The cities of
Calvert says he would have never bought his house if he'd known that apartments would be built on the slope across the street from it - again, to his knowledge, the home had never flooded before. The apartments are conveniently located above the floodplain, and Calvert attributes the new property's impermeability with creating more runoff and causing the two floods, though MSD's Johnson says that the new development would have been required to provide some sort of drainage to reduce runoff into Calvert's house. Plenty of people bought their homes in the floodplain thinking they'd just pay higher insurance premiums and that would be the end of it. After the storms from last spring and summer, because so many people didn't even know about the 50-percent rule, MSD added a disclosure statement on the flood determination letters that realtors request for prospective buyers. The letters, which warn of the increased risks that come with the property, now state whether or not floodplain permits have been issued for the property. However, because not everyone applies for permits after flood damage, and MSD can only track down so many that don't, the agency's database isn't comprehensive.
Lack of funds is also a constant constraint for MSD. The organization just got awarded a
After a 2009 storm, MSD offered to buy out 128 properties that frequently flooded on and near
Last month, I spoke with
Sullivan has been with the university since 1992, when it had one of its worst floods. Every morning, the 59-year-old gets up at
"That was a pretty ominous message," Sullivan says. In just 13 days, students would move in for fall semester. "If we had had 15,000 students on Belknap campus (during the flood), it would have been a whole different animal," he says. Ninety-two buildings were damaged, but the university had insurance covered by the state that paid
Part of the reason the campus flooded so much is because of combined sewer overflows. Much of the drainage system inside 1-264 was built early last century, when nobody saw a problem with combining sewage and water drainage in one big underground system and letting it flow into the
The U of
Despite its financial challenges, MSD has been implementing some of the same projects across the city. They've committed to planting 1,000 trees a year, mostly in the concrete-dominant downtown area. Johnson says that trees can use up to 400 gallons a day, depending on the location andt type of tree. "Especially willows," he says. "They can use up a lot of water really quick." Trees also clean water and add shade to water, which cools it, leading to more dissolved oxygen in streams, benefitting aquatic animals and tree roots that help stabilize stream banks and reduce erosion. "It's vital that we keep our waterways as cool as possible," Johnson says. He keeps a graph in his cubicle that shows what the future is looking like for rainfall. "We are the stormwater utility here, but we kind of see ourselves as the stewards of the environment here in
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