Friday, November 2, 2007

How To Flood Out Your Neighbor - Fort Wayne Style

1- Dig a deep hole in the ground

2- Find a place where the river narrows down

3- Find the worst place along the river. That would be where the river makes a sharp "dogleg" turn and the river is very narrow.

4- Dump the dirt next to the river bank, in the flood plain

5- Rains come, snow flys, snow melts, and water has no place to go.

6- Water backups in the rivers

7- Homes and properties are flooded

8- Remove some of the dirt after the flood season is past

9- Level out reaming dirt

10- You have just filled in a flood plain area without a DNR* permit


*An inquiry to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources was made nearly two weeks ago. They have yet to respond indicating what permit was ever granted for the property to be used as a temporary storage site of dirt, or that the flood plain could be forever raised.

That is how you flood out your neighbor. Thank you Mayor Richard. You got us one more time!

1 comment:

Charlotte A. Weybright said...

J.Q.

I am absolutely opposed to all the additional flood wall and levy construction which the City has deemed necessary to protect certain areas.

My area is one of them, and I have been fighting against a concrete monstrosity along Thieme Drive now for about 2 1/2 years. I live right across from the river, but the only flooding that occurs is more of a nuisance than destructive. Our basements have a little water in them and the river covers the road for a few days and comes up over the top of our lawns, but that is about it.

I flooded three times in a year and a half, but I was never prevented from entering my home. This was due to the steep gradients on Nelson and West Berry which hold the river's overflow in a "cup" area.

The flood control/protection plans should long ago have focused on a basin-wide solution rather than the stop-gap measures that have been put in place since the Flood of '82.