Last Monday (July 18) the City got its first glimpse of the long-awaited “Citywide Sewer Study” by Christopher B. Burke Engineering, Ltd.  We trust that should be the next big step toward coming up with ways to attack the flooding problems that have long bedeviled this community, reducing property values and the quality of life. 

To its credit, the City’s Flood Control Task Force wasted no time in scheduling a meeting two nights later to begin digging into the study’s details.  Those folks – chair Gail Fabisch and members Joe Saccomanno, Bob Mack, Lou Arrigoni, Kim Jones, Daniel Carroll, John Humm, Patricia Lofthouse and Steve Tolan – have their work cut out for them.  We wish them the genius of Einstein, the persistence of Edison, and the wisdom of Solomon. 

That’s because, frankly, whatever solution(s) they come up with cannot be expected to completely “solve” all our flooding problems: when you can get 6.86 inches of rain in one day, with 6.85 of it coming in less than 6 hours, nothing short of our own “Deep Tunnel” can be expected to hold all that water.  But we don’t see the City’s taxpayers ponying up the $1-2-3 hundred million our own DT would cost – nor should they, given how such an expense would put the City’s finances in a straitjacket for decades.

Nevertheless, multi-millions of dollars will be needed to make any kind of significant dent in the flooding problems that jeopardize basements in significant portions of Park Ridge after those 100-year rains we seem to be getting every 2-3 years.  If we leave these problems completely untreated, property values already battered by the recession will not come back with the vigor this community’s tax base needs, and its residents deserve.

Unless, of course, anybody thinks that piles of soggy carpeting and furniture piled on the parkways semi-regularly increases the EAV or is a sophisticated marketing ploy.  

If we read it correctly, the Burke “Summary Report” projects the “hard” remediation costs at between $11.65 million and $17.38 million for 11 targeted areas, not including engineering costs and the additional millions of dollars of debt service costs if these projects are funded with municipal bonds, as will likely be necessary. Notably, those figures also don’t include the costs for addressing such extreme and chronic flooding areas as Mayfield Estates, which were identified in Burke’s 2008 flooding assessment and the Task Force’s April 2010 Report, which we understand the Task Force will incorporate in its analysis and upcoming recommendations.

Whether that’s an expense the people of this community are willing to undertake remains to be seen.  But at least for the time being – and for the first time in memory – the City now has some legitimate, tangible alternatives that can be investigated, debated, and hopefully put to the voters in the form of one or more “advisory”/non-binding referenda on the March 20, 2012, primary ballot.  And assuming that the necessary preliminary “spade work” has been done prior to that election, should the voters approve the referendum(s) we would hope that one or more of these sewer projects could be “shovel ready” in time for the summer 2012 construction season. 

Mayor Dave Schmidt (who created the Task Force shortly after taking office in 2009), the City Council and the Task Force itself already seem to be headed in that direction, having set some fairly aggressive target dates for moving this process forward.  The Task Force and City Staff are working towards announcing their prioritization recommendations of the various remediation projects identified in the Burke report by September 7; and the City Council is likely to take up those prioritization recommendations at its September 12 meeting. 

Meanwhile, we think it’s time the City Council began seriously discussing the wisdom of further residential development (especially multi-family residential) that, for the past decade-plus, has consisted primarily of building the biggest structure a lot will hold, then covering up much of the remaining green space with oversized patios and driveways that minimize the lot’s water-absorbent surface area while often diverting run-off onto neighboring property – the kind of thing Vine Avenue residents Cliff Kowalski and Jeff Getz have been complaining about to no avail.

Unless Park Ridge aspires to becoming a real-life “Waterworld” (avec ou sans Kevin Costner), we need to start solving the current flooding problems sooner rather than later.

But we also need to stop adding to them.

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