At last Wednesday’s (July 29) meeting of the Park Ridge Flood Control Task Force, the first public words emerged from the City’s sewer consultant, Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd.  And those words were not encouraging.

If we understood them correctly after only one viewing – and we encourage you to judge for yourself by watching the Power Point presentation recorded by the volunteer-operated video camera donated by Mayor Dave Schmidt at www.motionbox.com/video/show/7a9ad7bc1919eccbf5 – it sounds like a comprehensive, city-wide flood control program will be financially unattainable.

But before anybody goes off half-cocked, we hope that the consultant will expand and refine its analysis as it continues with the process because, frankly, a few of its comments were hard to accept in the absence of some follow-up questioning that really wasn’t provided by the Task Force members. 

The first one that got our attention was the assertion that the flooding is not the result of insufficient maintenance of our sewer system, or of new development.  We wonder how the consultant could come up with that conclusion, given the fact (as we understand it) that the City has done little-to-none of the sewer-cam inspections of the system that it is planning to do.

But the most notable one was the consultant’s branding as “myth” the idea that there are one or more “gatekeepers” who open and close locks, valves, etc. in logic-defying ways that permit flooding to occur before rapidly draining it away.  That might cause many of us – who, on that bleak Saturday morning of September 13, 2008, watched inches and even feet of water accumulate in our basements over the span of an hour or more before mysteriously draining away in minutes – to wonder out loud, if not utter a barnyard epithet that begins with the word “bull.” 

But only Task Force member Gale Fabisch had the temerity to challenge that conclusion, and challenge it he did – asserting that there are, indeed, such “gatekeepers” because the whole Chicagoland metropolitan area has a “controlled” sewage system where even the level of the Chicago River can be, and is, controlled by…wait for it…locks and valves.  And Fabisch should know, having worked 30+ years for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. 

For the second meeting in a row, Fabisch has shown himself to be the most valuable Task Force member by a sizable margin.  Hopefully, his colleagues, especially those with engineering backgrounds, will raise their games and begin asking the tough questions that need to be asked, starting with Public Works Director Wayne Zingsheim.

If we heard Zingsheim correctly, protecting all of Park Ridge against just one of those “10-Year Floods” could cost us in the $240 million range.  Unfortunately, nobody (not even Fabisch) asked Zingsheim to explain whether the entire City needed that protection, which would seem to be a reasonable question in view of the fact that certain areas of the City report little flooding, while certain other areas flooding is mercifully limited to rainwater seepage instead of the nastier sewage backups.  It was left to Fabisch to make that distinction when appealing to more residents to make the effort to report flooding

But hundreds of millions of dollars is not the final word on that topic.  And that also doesn’t mean that significant, worthwhile flood relief can still be achieved on a less ambitious, more focused scale – as evidenced by the consultant’s focus on six specific flooding locations, identified as “St. James Place,” “Northwest Park,” the “Country Club,” “Burton Lane,” “Overhill” and “Mayfield Estates.” 

Once again, we encourage you anyone who has an interest in our flooding problems to watch the video of the meeting, not only to listen to the consultant’s presentation but also to the good/bad/silly questions and comments from the Task Force members.   

But whatever you do, don’t bail on the video until you get about 3/4 of the way through the second (of the 3) video clips when resident questions and comments are received.  Because the comments of Mr. Al Laird, 1525 South Courtland, should not be missed. 

If the iconic Tribune columnist Mike Royko were still alive and giving out his “Ubi est mea?” (“Where’s mine?”) awards, we would nominate Mr. Laird for his money-is-no-object-so-long-as-I-get-mine approach to the much-discussed flood control rebate program.

That fiscally irresponsible program (considering that the City is running another multi-million dollar deficit again this year), proposed by 7th Ward Ald. Frank “Borrow & Spend” Wsol, would put $240,000 of our tax dollars – in up to $2,500 increments – into the private pockets of residents who already installed flood control systems on their property.  But judging from Mr. Laird’s little diatribe, $2,500 of what is basically a “welfare” payment isn’t enough for him. 

Guess he really must be “special.”