The Metro Engineer, Steve Mishu, who has been dealing with the Salemtown controversy involving stormwater drainage on the Schoene Ansicht development said by e-mail that the drain system installed to direct water to a lower adjoining property meets regulations, and thus, required no action on his division's part. However, according to the affected neighbors, when he came out to meet with them a few weeks ago after they filed a complaint, he told them that the drainage pipe was "bad" for them, and they believe that that comment was the basis for his statement of "concern" to developers in a January e-mail. Mr. Mishu's exact comment in the January 23 e-mail to Dale and Associates was:To follow up on this. I made a site visit today and am concerned for the adjacent property owner. I understand the inverted crown alley thing but its not inverted now and it may not be inverted enough when completed to divert the runoff [when the drain system is operating].When I asked Mr. Mishu last Friday why he would express concern in the January e-mail if the pipe met regulations from the beginning, he responded:
Although the plans met our regulations and were approved, a complaint was made. I take all complaints seriously.When I asked whether the the regulations essentially allow this drain system to direct the flow of stormwater run-off on to lower-lying adjoining property, his response was:
[Y]es. Runoff tends to flow downhill.I won't try to attribute an attitude to that rather curt response. Maybe Mr. Mishu is just busy and didn't have time to respond beyond stating the obvious.
There is wide discrepency in interpretations over what was was said and what was meant in the original Metro investigation of Schoene Ansicht's drain system. The affected owners are now left with the impression that Metro Sewer Department should be their next stop. The buck has been passed from Planning to Stormwater to Sewers: it really does flow downhill in local government.
If nothing changes, I would have the "neighbors" put up a 2'or higher stone, concrete, or brick wall along the entire back side of their property. This would stop most of the drainage going onto their property. It will most likely cause a large build-up of water in the alley and the Schoene Ansicht property,...but than that becomes Metro and the developer's problem. Which means, they just "might" do something about it.
ReplyDeleteOn behalf of my business partners and I, I'd like to say that we are very interested in protecting our investment, as well as yours. We would only be shooting ourselves in the foot, if we tried to impose or push anything detrimental to our neighborhood. We have 10 other properties (lots) that we plan to develop in the near future and it would be asinine for us to do business as bad neighbors.
ReplyDeleteIt’s real easy to look at the pipe and just assume that this is designed to divert water directly to the alley. That’s not the case.
We dug a hole, 15' (wide) x 75'(long) x 5' (deep). A hole that size would hold 42,000 gallons of water if it were completely empty. We have 32 plastic chambers covered with special fabric layered within layers of gravel. The system is designed to collect the water that hits the roof of each building and the driveway on a lot that is 59' x 178' or .24109 acres. It takes 3,630 cuft or 27,154 gallons of water to cover an entire acre, one inch deep. So in theory, it would take 6,546.56 gallons of water to cover the entire area of land that is occupied by Shone Ansicht with 1 inch of water. We also have to install a metal restrictor plate at the top of the outlet pipe that reduces the diameter of the outlet pipe shown in all of the blog postings down to a 2 inch outlet then it will have to travel down the remaining full diameter outlet pipe 45ft before the end that’s on display, is reached.
Michael Garrigan of Dale and Associates can provide you with the cfs (cubic feet per second) calculations for the system. The numbers are very low. I hope this helps you concerns.
Feel free to call me if you have any questions.
Respectfully,
Steve Yokley Jr.
615-977-2373
Hang: the problem with the neighbors building a wall is that the run-off would flow down the sloping alley, turn left at Hume and pool into the neighbors' front yard at the Hume-5th intersection. Part of the problem is that Metro never alleviated the Hume-5th water pooling problem, so even if the neighbors don't get it from the back-end, they'll be getting it from the front-end. UP,LLC co-owners have never attempted to work with us to try and get Metro to solve run-off problems, which might have helped their own run-off issues. They don't participate in association actions until they need something from us.
ReplyDelete