Yesterday’s Herald-Advocate story on Monday night’s special City Council meeting (“Flood control measures get deluge of support,” June 30) – which reportedly lasted 5-1/2 hours and was packed with people whose homes have flooding problems – presents an informative study in contrasts between the leadership styles of Mayor Dave Schmidt and our Public Works Director, Wayne Zingsheim.
Schmidt blamed the City’s staff and its elected officials, including himself, for having neglected the City’s sewer system over the past several years, noting that residents “are justified in being upset with the inaction by city government over the past few years.”
Zingsheim, on the other hand, took the typical bureaucrat approach. First he blamed too much rain falling too quickly, and then pointed to other suburbs (like Elk Grove Village) who also had problems. Memo to Zinger: the incompetence or ineffectiveness of other towns in dealing with civic problems doesn’t excuse your own.
And just in case those alibis weren’t enough, Zingsheim also blamed the residents themselves for being ignorant of our sewer system and how it works…or doesn’t.
“The public needs more education on certain issues,” he insisted.
We agree, Wayne, and that “education” effort should have been started by you last September, when we suffered millions of dollars of flood damage even as many residents wondered about the mysterious (but welcome) drainage of their basements between – as best we recall – 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. the morning of September 13, 2008.
Maybe that’s why so many of us believe in “mysterious valves” whose opening or closing is the difference between inches and feet of water in our basements. And why many of us wonder whether our relief sewers are working…or whether we even have relief sewers on our block.
Of course, because of the non-existent Wayne Zingsheim educate-the-public initiative, we can’t see for ourselves (like, for example, on the City’s website) exactly what streets or alleys in Park Ridge actually have relief sewers. Do you have such a map, Wayne? If so, why isn’t it posted so all of us ignorant residents can check it out?
According to the H-A article, Zingsheim also thinks residents should do their own flood control by installing overhead sewers and other flood prevention devices. That’s one way of avoiding accountability for years of bureaucratic inaction on the problem, but don’t those systems increase the sewer and flooding problems for the system as a whole, and for those residents who can’t currently afford such systems?
Unfortunately for all those residents of Park Ridge whose homes may be their single largest investment, City government has done little-to-nothing over the past several years to understand and effectively address the symptoms or the causes of a sewer system that seemingly everyone agrees is antiquated and inadequate, or to address an electrical power delivery system that is so undependable as to make private electrical generators the newest status symbol.
That’s because any reasonable solution to the flooding problem will require a big bond issue and higher taxes to pay for it, which is going to be a tough sell in a down economy and with a City staff and Council that think a $2 million deficit budget is “balanced.” And they aren’t nearly as fun to talk about as redevelopment projects that involve paving over even more green space, and adding hundreds of additional residential units to an already overtaxed sewer system.
Which is why converting B-1 space to “R” space is something than shouldn’t be done on a whim, or because a handful of residents finally get a rise out of an otherwise-inert alderman. But that’s a discussion for another day…this Friday, to be exact.
10 comments so far
PD:
Excellent post! On the subject of relief sewers, I would add one question. Do the existing ones even work?? I heard very clearly during the post September flood meeting that their were neighborhoods that had relief sewers that still had massive flooding. There was a very direct comment made by a resident that “the relief sewers failed”. As I recall, this was one of the many unanswered qeustions that the then Mayor committed to following up on – like that happened!
I am all for spending money to solve the problem (even though my basement is dry as a bone), but my fear is that we run around putting in relief sewers (at 300K a pop I believe) and they cannot or do not handle the rainfall we had in September. That will leave us still wet and a lot poorer.
Can’t wait til Friday!
What’s Friday?
Didn’t see anything on the PR site.
anon on 07.01.09 10:36 am
As was explained to me by a public works employee, a relief sewer is designed to collect rainwater runoff and hold it until it can drain into the main sewer. So if the main sewer is filled, the relief sewer will hold the rainwater that would otherwise cause a backup if it flowed directly into the main sewer. But the relief sewers only have so much capacity. If the main sewer isn’t draining, then there’s no place for the relief sewer to drain into and, eventually, you get back-up. But from what I understand, if you have relief sewers, your back-up will more likely be rainwater than sewage.
So if I got it right, having relief sewers throughout the City would not guaranty no flooding, but it would reduce the likelihood and the severity of it when it occurred.
Anon 4:45PM:
My understanding is the same as yours with one exception – the comment about back-up being more likely rainwater.
The sewer line from each house is connected to the main sewer line, not to the relief sewer. So any back-up into the houses comes from the main sewer, not the relief sewer. Theoretically, because the main sewer has not been diluted with the rainwater that now goes to the relief sewer, any back-up will now contain a higher percentage of sewage than it did before the relief sewer was installed.
Anon 4:45:
That is why in several posts I have stated, “depending on what your definition of solving the problem is”. It would appear that the public sentiment is to stop the problem, which relief sewers did not do in the Sept storm. There will be more storms like this coming. Does this mean that taxes go up and people still have to spend 6-10K (which I already did) to flood proof their house? Does that make sense?
A part of the flood committee document better define what they consider a solution. If expectations are not managed there are going to be a lot of pissed off people. Come to think of it, there will be a lot of pissed off people no matter what.
Anon on 07.02.09 8:30 am:
I agree that the City owes us an explanation of what any “solution” will actually be, so that we make an informed decision on whether to spend money on this problem, and how much.
But I question your conclusion that relief sewers didn’t stop the flooding problem in September, 2008. A number of homes in Park Ridge did not have water, but I have not heard any authoritative account of whether or not those dry basements were related to the presence or absence of relief sewers.
I also have not heard any authoritative figure of how many relief sewers/blocks of relief sewers we have city-wide, so as to judge how much additional water could have been accommodated if they were city-wide. Of course, this is the kind of information that should be readily available on the City’s website, but isn’t. So we’re left with a lot of guesswork. Hopefully the flood commmittee will do the job right.
Hoover:
I agree with everything you wrote. My comments about the relief sewers not wroking came directly from discussions in the post Sept flood meeting. There were neighborhoods that had them and flooded anyway. As to whether having them city wide would make a difference – hell, I have no idea. Thinking through it, I would say that a relief sewer on my block would have little affect on the next block.
You are correct about there being dry basements. I would guess that many of them had flood control systems. That was certainly the case in my neighborhood. Ironically, many of the same houses flooded a few weeks ago.
Again, you are correct – guess work!!
If the city did nothing with the sewers and half of the homes in the city installed flood control valves on their sewers, do you have any idea what that would do to the rest of the homes, and to city streets? Check out Tuesday’s Park Ridge Underground picture!
This link to flooding information and helpful facts was found on the Village of Palatine’s website:
http://www.palatine.il.us/publicwrks/sewers.html
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