VANDERBURGH COUNTY

DRAINAGE BOARD

JUNE 1, 2010

The Vanderburgh County Drainage Board met in session this 1^st day of June, 2010 at 5:32 p.m. in room 301 of the Civic Center Complex with Commissioner Melcher presiding.

Commissioner Melcher: I guess, we’ll go ahead and start the Drainage Board meeting this evening.

Bill Jeffers: I’m sorry, on your agenda I failed to put approval of the minutes. That needs to be done first please.

Commissioner Winnecke: Motion to approve.

Commissioner Melcher: Second. Madelyn, do you want to read the roll, call the roll on that?

Madelyn Grayson: Commissioner Winnecke?

Commissioner Winnecke: Yes.

Madelyn Grayson: President Melcher?

Commissioner Melcher: Yes.

Madelyn Grayson: Or Vice President Melcher.

(Motion approved 2-0)

Bill Jeffers: If anyone needs a copy of the agenda, Madelyn has some extra copies.

Bill Jeffers: The first order of business is a drainage plan, a modified drainage plan for lot seven and lot eight, Arrowood Subdivision. The addresses are 4526 and 4527 Arrowridge Drive. It’s a realigned pipe and some elevation changes on the concrete pad for the driveway....that’s not, oh, here it is on your screen. It’s at the end of the cul-de-sac.... Arrowridge, right, lot seven and lot eight, and they just built two new homes. The change occurs on lot eight. There was to be some grading details that caused the driveway slab to be very steep in the area where you would park your vehicle outside your garage door, and that was dangerous for, if there were to be a handicap, a need for handicap access, it was too steep for that. So, the builder elevated that pad and made it more evenly graded, and that required realignment of the pipe. So, I asked, and realignment of the overflow drainage, you know, the emergency drainage, so I asked him for some new calculations, and they show that the pipe that was installed, an 18 inch culvert, flowing full was just one tenth of a cubic foot short of the 100 year flow rate. It was 8.78 rather than 8.88, so it was very, just very slightly short of the 100 year flow. With a six inch head over top of the pipe it flowed much greater than needed for a 100 year flow, and you could expect at least six inches, that puts the water out in the street, in the cul-de-sac, that puts it just peeking out of the inlet. Not covering the street, but just barely coming out into the gutter it will flow at 19.6 cubic feet per second, which is well in excess of the 100 year flow. Now, if it were to get six inches deep out in the street, right on top of that inlet, it would flow twice the required amount for a 100 year flow, according to the calculations submitted by Andy Easley Engineering, Incorporated. He also notes that any water that might run across land, over land, would be two feet lower than the lowest elevation of the, finished floor elevation in the garage, of any structure involved. So, it would not flood the homes. With those calculations it will be on record forever, and the new plan, the County Surveyor recommends approval of the modified drainage plan for lot seven and lot eight, Arrowood Subdivision.

Commissioner Winnecke: Mr. Chairman, I’ll move approval as presented.

Commissioner Melcher: I’ll second it. Any discussion? Seeing none, any from the audience? All in favor say aye.

Commissioner Winnecke: Aye.

Commissioner Melcher: Aye.

(Motion approved 2-0)

Bill Jeffers: We have about 25 minutes left in our allotted time, so I would ask anyone who speaks to this issue to be brief, including myself, so that we can get done without going into overtime with, on the t.v. station, and having to pay extra. We’re going to go to Patrick Gorman’s drainage issue. This is lot 307, Clear Creek Village. It looks to me as if Mr. and Mrs. Gorman are in the audience. They live at 420 Reliance Drive. Here’s a picture of their home from the Assessor’s website. Their complaint involves an incorrectly constructed drainage swale on homes behind them, causing problems on their yard. Now, you can see their home has already been constructed. Everything on Reliance Drive, the homes have been constructed. Then, beginning a year or two ago, they started constructing homes on the lots behind them on Sturchi Drive. At the time they started construction, you can see that the drainage swale for this entire block was in place, running down through here, in some areas it was already totally grassed, other areas there had been some disturbance from construction activities, but there is a silt fence up and the waterway is open and free flowing at the time that the construction of those homes began on the lot you can see behind the Gorman’s home. So, we’ll go to the drainage plan next, I believe. Yes, the first picture is a scan of the original drainage plan, and where I’ve highlighted in yellow, that shows, if we could blow it up, if you squint at your screen on your desk up there you can probably see it, the flow line is clearly indicated along the north side of the property line. Not....the flow line of the ditch, and the bottom of the ditch, in other words, is not on the Gorman’s property, it’s on the property of the homes behind the Gorman’s. As you saw in the Assessor’s website picture, the swales should be over on the property behind them. Some part of the slope might be on their property, but not the ditch itself. Okay, that’s the drainage plan that was in place at the time construction started on the homes behind the Gorman’s. We can just zip through these other photographs, there’s an aerial photograph from our website showing all of the yards behind the Gorman’s on Sturchi Drive, were not built upon when all of the homes on Reliance were finished, and the swale, you can again clearly see it’s over on the north side of the property line. That’s just a close up, the same thing showing the Gorman’s location in relationship to the rest of the properties.

Brenda Jeffers: (Inaudible. Not at microphone.)

Bill Jeffers: Yeah, just go down through one through whatever. That’s the approximate property line. Basically, what you have is a 20 foot wide drainage easement. The eight foot on the Gorman’s side, which is this lot right here with the telephone pedestal, power pedestals in it. The eight foot on the south side of the line is for utilities. The 12 feet on the north side of the line is where the drainage swale is supposed to be. This is after the homes were constructed. This is just the other day, about a week ago when it rained.

Patrick Gorman: May I make a comment on this picture?

Bill Jeffers: Yes. I was going to go through these pictures real quickly, and then let Mr. Gorman....I just want to....he’s never seen these pictures. No one has ever seen them but Brenda and myself as we put this together. I just wanted to briefly show the pictures so that if he needs to call one up for his comments, he can. So, why don’t we just go through them quickly. Again, that’s the ditch, it’s on the wrong side of the line, the line’s over here. Next picture, there’s the property line, the water, the earth from the houses uphill had slumped down and pushed the drain over on the wrong side of the line. Again, you can see water, this is almost right. The swale is still perceptible over here, but it’s also been forced over here by sedimentation from the building sites. Same thing, same thing, I’m just showing you the path...this is Mr. Gorman’s yard right here. Here’s the property line, basically, and you can clearly see that the ditch is on the wrong side. I spoke with the builder, Mr. David Stevens, he said this particular yard slumped down, that there was water seepage out of the hill and the soil physically slumped down and encroached across the line. This is just showing you the conditions Mr. Gorman has to deal with when he’s maintaining his yard. That’s not supposed to happen. You’re supposed to be able to run right across it with a lawnmower. This is just some wet conditions. Here is the line, you can see the ditch is on the wrong side of the line today. Same thing. That’s it. So, I’m going to turn it over to him and let him make his statements. He can.... Mr. Gorman, when you look over here the slides are numbered and you can call up any one you want. Yes, sir.

Patrick Gorman: I’ll be brief.

Bill Jeffers: They charge us another $200 if we go past. (Inaudible) brief.

Patrick Gorman: I’ve since retired so I can....thank you for hearing us. I just wanted to point out that on that picture...that one, actually the property line, you can’t tell it, it’s about half way more to the right, to those–

Brenda Jeffers: Over here?

Patrick Gorman: Yes, there’s a flower bed, my neighbor has a flower bed and the property line is right on the–

Bill Jeffers: See this little pointer here?

Patrick Gorman: Uh-huh.

Bill Jeffers: You can point right at it.

Patrick Gorman: The property line, actually, there’s a flower bed that runs down through here, the property line is right on the corner of that flower bed. That’s where the pin is. I paid quite a bit of money to get it surveyed a couple of years ago. Anyway, the rest of the pictures are pretty well, you saw how it is. The five lots that built above us are probably 30 feet higher in level, because it’s quite a steep hill. They have no backyards, they’re just like that. What the builder did was take the spoil from the basements, he dug all five basements, and then I was wondering what he was going to do with all of the dirt, well, now I know. They shoved it down the hill and totally took the easement. There’s no water drainage on the people behind us at all. The drainage easement that is there is, I think 12 feet wide, maybe 20, but the water is running entirely on our property. I tried to go back there today to take some pictures and it’s a marsh. You can’t even walk on it. We can’t cut the grass, you see the weeds, you can’t get to it. We’ve asked him on a couple of occasions who’s going to fix it? The last time my neighbor talked to him he said that he was going to take care of it. Well, he took care of it with somebody with a shovel and more or less drug a little ditch to kind of make the water flow. It doesn’t, we have geese in the backyard now swimming in the water that’s there as of today yet. I didn’t know what else to do , so, I talked to Mr. Jeffers and he suggested that I come down here. So, that’s my situation.

Commissioner Winnecke: Thank you. Bill?

Bill Jeffers: Thank you, Pat.

Patrick Gorman: Thanks.

Bill Jeffers: I apologize for that line being off there. I mean, what do you expect from a surveyor, a County Surveyor, but we could correct that in our next display. Basically, I sent a pretty detailed reply to Mr. Gorman’s first submitted complaint indicating what his options were with regard to filing a petition or just asking the Drainage Board directly to take action under the drainage code. I have spoken, as I indicated, with David Stevens, who is down in Kentucky doing a residential development down there and will be back later this week or next week. He told me that he plans on correcting this this summer. I would suggest that he not try to plant grass, or not try to do it during this wet of a season, to wait until late July, early August, until he moves in there when the ground is suitable to be worked. And, specifically, because any grass he would plant, let’s say in July, is not going to take hold. He needs to wait until mid-August to plant his grass. Definitely plant it before September 15^th, add some wheat to the grass mix so it will take hold immediately this fall, and then by next spring it should look as well as it does going up the hill, because that was planted last year, okay? But, Mr. Gorman’s complaint is valid. That ditch was supposed to be turned over to the property owners in a condition that could be mowed with a push lawn mower or a riding lawn mower, that’s our code. It should be maintained as a grass lawn. It’s not a ditch, per se, it’s just a swale, and that’s why the easement is 20 foot wide with 12 foot being dedicated solely to the drainage swale so that it would be nice and flat so you can ride right across it on a riding mower. You can see that it can’t be maintained that way now because of the poor condition. However, I checked with John Stoll and his records indicate that the, well, his records show that the letter of credit was released, which would indicate that the ditch was looked at at some point in time in the past and adjudged to be stable, but that obviously was before they built the homes uphill. What happened was Brad Sturchi finished the majority of the subdivision with his building, you know, he built the homes, then when he went over to Warrick County and opened a new subdivision he sold these last six lots to David Stevens and David Stevens built out those last six homes out of several hundred homes. So, the percentage of the lots that were left unfinished was such that it was allowable to release the letter of credit if everything was stable, and it was. So, the responsibility, in my mind, is to the developer, Mr. Stevens, to make the corrections. I told him that today. He agreed he would do that this summer. We just need to hold him to that. I also told him that we wouldn’t release him from responsibility until the swale was adjudged to be stabilized and in its correct location and capable to be maintained with regular lawn maintenance equipment that a homeowner would have. Once it was released that the homeowners would be responsible, individually, for maintaining their property and collectively for seeing to it that each other does what’s proper.

Commissioner Melcher: So, you’re basically wanting him, which I think he should do, the whole swale, not just the Gorman property, but the other property too?

Bill Jeffers: The approximately five or six lots that are involved with this.

Commissioner Melcher: Right, he should do that whole swale back to where it was.

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir, from where we started the pictures down to where the inlet is that carries this water out to the street, which is about six–

Commissioner Melcher: Right, I agree with you on that.

Commissioner Winnecke: Bill, did I understand you correctly in that his proposed mitigation can’t really start until later in the summer, but needs to be started before the middle of September?

Bill Jeffers: It needs to be finished before the middle of September. Probably needs to be started after the first of August. That would be my recommendation. I simply had told Mr. Gorman, I mean, he’s been very patient about this for a period of months, but he asked to be on the agenda. I said, please come down, and between the time that I told him that last week and today I was able to contact Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Stevens assured me that he would address the problem.

Commissioner Winnecke: Are there any more immediate remedies that could help the Gorman’s in the mean time?

Bill Jeffers: Mr. Stevens also indicated that he was going to put in a sub-surface drain that would intercept some of the sub-surface water that’s coming off the lot right behind Mr. Gorman and keeping that area so wet that it can’t be mowed. That’s one of the reasons why the owner is not able to mow that tall grass, supposedly is because there is constant water coming out of that hill. So, Mike Wathen and I are going to go out there, I believe, Friday, and we’re going to try to meet with Mr. Stevens and give him some sort of suggestion or referral as to how to intercept that sub-surface water and drain it so that it doesn’t constantly keep Mr. Gorman’s property and the property behind him wet, even in between rain storms.

Commissioner Winnecke: Is this a recommendation that we should eventually commit to writing, to him, as a directive?

Bill Jeffers: I guess, my recommendation would be to persevere in this citizen issue until it’s resolved either through an adequate response by Mr. Stevens or by an action of your Board, enforcing the code.

Commissioner Winnecke: Right. Okay.

Bill Jeffers: I think the first thing to do is to see if Mr. Stevens will follow through with his response to me today, which was a positive response.

Commissioner Melcher: I agree with you.

Bill Jeffers: And a responsible response.

Commissioner Melcher: You’re going to meet with him Friday too, right?

Bill Jeffers: Yes, sir. I plan to call him and, hopefully, meet with him Friday, if he’s back in town. He said he definitely wants to meet out there and he’ll try to come back in town. He’s down in Kentucky somewhere building homes. It’s not an easy economic climate out there right now for home builders, and I don’t want to impose a hardship on any party, but I don’t want Mr. Gorman’s problem to be ignored unduly.

Commissioner Winnecke: I agree.

Commissioner Melcher: Mr. Gorman, are you okay with what Bill is talking about, about meeting Friday, if he can?

Patrick Gorman: Sure, I just want it resolved.

Commissioner Melcher: No, I figured that.

Patrick Gorman: We’ve tried on several occasions to talk to him, and just like any other builder, he says, I’m going to get to it. All of a sudden you turn around and it’s a year and half later and nothing’s happened.

Commissioner Winnecke: We’ll keep him–

Patrick Gorman: Perhaps it needs to be in writing, or, you know.

Commissioner Melcher: Well, it’s going to be–

Patrick Gorman: Or something official.

Commissioner Melcher: –well, it’s going to be in our minutes tonight, and then if it needs to get more official we can do that too.

Patrick Gorman: I understand it’s going to take some time.

Commissioner Winnecke: We appreciate your patience. Mr. Jeffers will help us keep him on our radar.

Bill Jeffers: I’ll keep you apprised of any progress or lack of progress and if at any point in time, if you just want to leave it open. You can direct me now, or you can direct me in the future to put it all in writing, and copy you as to what’s going on.

Commissioner Melcher: Why don’t we do this since we meet every other week, why don’t we just go ahead and make a motion for you to put it in writing when you deem that that’s the next step it should go. Then we don’t have to wait for another meeting.

Bill Jeffers: Right, and I’ll send copies to you folks, via e-mail, and copy Mr. Gorman as well.

Commissioner Melcher: That way when you believe that you’ve got to do that next, then that’s when we’ll do it.

Bill Jeffers: Okay, that’s fine.

Commissioner Melcher: I’ll make that, well, maybe you need to do that.

Commissioner Winnecke: I’ll make that in the form of a motion.

Commissioner Melcher: I’ll second it. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye.

Commissioner Winnecke: Aye.

Commissioner Melcher: Aye. Okay.

(Motion approved 2-0)

Bill Jeffers: Okay, I do not have any claims or other business. The only thing remaining would be public comment, if any.

Commissioner Melcher: Is there any other public comment this evening for the Drainage Board? Seeing none, we’ll stand adjourned. Thanks, Bill.

Bill Jeffers: Thank you.

Commissioner Winnecke: Thanks, Bill.

(The meeting was adjourned at 5:55 p.m.)

Those in Attendance:

Stephen Melcher                      Lloyd Winnecke                        Bill Jeffers

Ted C. Ziemer, Jr.                    Madelyn Grayson                     Brenda Jeffers

Patrick Gorman                        Others Unidentified                   Members of Media

VANDERBURGH COUNTY

DRAINAGE BOARD

Stephen Melcher, Vice President

Lloyd Winnecke, Member

(Recorded and transcribed by Madelyn Grayson.)