This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of Louisville Magazine.
To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, please click here.
Illustration by Kendall Regan
You might assume, knowing what we know now, that new development in the floodplain would be prohibited. It’s not. “We have a lot of development in Jefferson County that would economically kill this community (if it weren’t here),” MSD’s Johnson says. “Ford Motor Company is in a floodplain. A portion of the airport is in a floodplain. We don’t have the ability, and there’s not many communities that do, to say, ‘You cannot build in a floodplain.’ But I can tell you that in my 17 years on the development area of MSD, development has helped drainage in many, many areas with mitigation efforts and the detention basins they’ve done.” New development in the city is required to mitigate for stormwater runoff at a one-and-a-half ratio: For every gallon of stormwater added from development, the developer must provide drainage at one-and-a-half times that. “We have four large basins in the Pond Creek watershed (which stretches east from the southwestern part of the county to Fern Creek) solely built by private development. That equates to 300 acre-feet of storage,” Johnson says. Other examples of private development flood mitigation include: the Tumbleweed on Outer Loop, which was raised above the floodplain; Ford, which built a drainage structure to reduce the flow of water downstream; the Home Depot on Preston Highway, which constructed a paved channel through an existing neighborhood, relieving water issues for many of the residents; and the manmade lakes near Jefferson Mall.
The cities of St. Matthews, Jeffersontown, Anchorage and Shively have chosen to handle stormwater drainage themselves, without the help of MSD. Johnson says the 12,000 structures in the floodplain are a $500-million issue. “What you can find out is, with enough dollars and dynamite you can fix most flooding issues,” he says. “You can buy out homes, take them out of the floodplain or you can do flood-mitigation projects. Once again, you’re talking about a dollar amount. Right now in the United States, there’s no city out there that’s collecting enough funds for drainage to get everybody out of the floodplain.”
Janet Hendricks, a realtor at Wakefield Reutlinger, says she automatically filters out floodplain properties when searching on the Board of Realtors site, but that a lot of realtors don’t know to do that. She also looks at LOJIC, the city’s geographic information system that shows 100-year-floodplain areas. “I’m terrified I’m gonna overlook something,” Hendricks says. With insurance rates hiking up, even with the CRS discount, those houses are becoming cost prohibitive. Hendricks says she can look at C.L.U.E. reports, which show property insurance claims going back seven years. For those stuck with their riskier floodplain homes, who maybe weren’t sure what they were getting into, prospective buyers are harder to come by.
Calvert says he would have never bought his house if he’d known that apartments would be built on the slope across the street from it — again, to his knowledge, the home had never flooded before. The apartments are conveniently located above the floodplain, and Calvert attributes the new property’s impermeability with creating more runoff and causing the two floods, though MSD’s Johnson says that the new development would have been required to provide some sort of drainage to reduce runoff into Calvert’s house. Plenty of people bought their homes in the floodplain thinking they’d just pay higher insurance premiums and that would be the end of it. After the storms from last spring and summer, because so many people didn’t even know about the 50-percent rule, MSD added a disclosure statement on the flood determination letters that realtors request for prospective buyers. The letters, which warn of the increased risks that come with the property, now state whether or not floodplain permits have been issued for the property. However, because not everyone applies for permits after flood damage, and MSD can only track down so many that don’t, the agency’s database isn’t comprehensive.
Lack of funds is also a constant constraint for MSD. The organization just got awarded a $15-million grant from FEMA. They applied for it in 2009. Grants are not guaranteed, and MSD often has to contribute 13 percent of its own money, which it can usually come up with. Contributing $1 million for a $15 million grant is a good deal for the agency, Johnson says. Parrott says that the MSD board needs to consider a rate increase to set aside funds for future quick-buy programs, mitigation projects and local matches for grants.
After a 2009 storm, MSD offered to buy out 128 properties that frequently flooded on and near Maple Street in west Louisville. Even with the help of federal and state dollars, the $9 million buyout took more than five years to complete. Though the area is not in a floodplain, it is, as a Broken Sidewalk blog post points out, atop what used to be a stream. In the 2009 storm, parts of west Louisville got eight inches in 45 minutes. “Mother Nature is consistent with one thing: being unpredictable,” Johnson says. Several others I talk to make similar statements: “Rain is from God. Some things can’t be fixed that easily,” says councilman Dan Johnson, who for 25 years has fought for flood relief in his district, which includes a lot of south Louisville. “I hope and pray we never have an event like April the 3rd,” councilwoman Flood says.
Last month, I spoke with Dennis Sullivan, head of emergency management at the University of Louisville. “Hate floods. Don’t want any more,” he says. “They are a pain and a nuisance and they are caused by myriad things that have happened over the last 75 to 100 years. Urban floods like we receive are not just the rain that falls on the campus. We are in a location that puts us at a fairly significant risk, but the fathers that built the university back when didn’t really realize that. They couldn’t find a nice hill in the Highlands and say, ‘That’s where we’re gonna go.’”
Sullivan has been with the university since 1992, when it had one of its worst floods. Every morning, the 59-year-old gets up at 6 a.m. to check the National Weather Service forecast. On the morning of Aug. 4, 2009, the forecast said that a thundershower would roll through with half an inch of rain. He met with the U of L police chief at Panera Bread on Poplar Level Road for breakfast, like he does several times a week, to discuss various issues. He looked outside and the sky had turned black. “It looked biblical,” he says. As he rushed to campus to try to avoid getting drenched, he could barely see the road. But he made it and immediately started sending safety alerts. Between 7:45 and 9:15 campus got about eight-and-a-half inches of rain. One alert read: “Campus is flooded. If you’re not on campus, stay away. If you’re on campus, find high ground.”
“That was a pretty ominous message,” Sullivan says. In just 13 days, students would move in for fall semester. “If we had had 15,000 students on Belknap campus (during the flood), it would have been a whole different animal,” he says. Ninety-two buildings were damaged, but the university had insurance covered by the state that paid $21 million with a $1,500 deductible. And, when President Obama declared the flood a national emergency, FEMA chipped in another $2 million to cover remaining costs. “It’s just like earthquake insurance,” Sullivan says. “You don’t have to get earthquake insurance. Who knows whether or not we’re going to have a big earthquake? Nobody knows. And who knows whether you’re gonna be affected by urban flooding? Until it happens, you really don’t know.”
Part of the reason the campus flooded so much is because of combined sewer overflows. Much of the drainage system inside I-264 was built early last century, when nobody saw a problem with combining sewage and water drainage in one big underground system and letting it flow into the Ohio for our downstream neighbors. Hard surfaces, like roofs and concrete parking lots at the nearby airport, and the Fair and Expo Center, let water run into the combined sewer system. “You’ve got all this water going somewhere and we’re the beneficiary of it. We get it on our campus,” Sullivan says. “Nobody thought about it when they built the airport. It was farmland — build an airport.” The flash flooding puts pressure on the combined sewer system and can bust open manholes, which creates even more flooding. This, along with the risk of drowning, is a big reason why the university has warned people not to walk through the floodwater. Now, MSD is in an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency, called the Consent Decree, aimed to reduce the effects of combined sewer overflows.
The U of L Sustainability Council calls the 2009 storm a wake-up call that motivated the university to mitigate its climate impact and to adapt to climate change by implementing sustainable stormwater management. With MSD’s help, U of L has diverted water from running into the sewer system with infiltration and rainwater-harvesting projects. Green roofs and rain gardens have been part of the mix. Infiltration basins are now concealed in some of the university’s parking lots and lawns. U of L was able to track the effectiveness of its mitigation efforts when it was hit again in 2012 and again last year, suffering minimal damage.
Despite its financial challenges, MSD has been implementing some of the same projects across the city. They’ve committed to planting 1,000 trees a year, mostly in the concrete-dominant downtown area. Johnson says that trees can use up to 400 gallons a day, depending on the location andt type of tree. “Especially willows,” he says. “They can use up a lot of water really quick.” Trees also clean water and add shade to water, which cools it, leading to more dissolved oxygen in streams, benefitting aquatic animals and tree roots that help stabilize stream banks and reduce erosion. “It’s vital that we keep our waterways as cool as possible,” Johnson says. He keeps a graph in his cubicle that shows what the future is looking like for rainfall. “We are the stormwater utility here, but we kind of see ourselves as the stewards of the environment here in Louisville,” he says. “There are sins of the past that we’re making up for, but we’re getting there.”
Illustration by Kendall Regan
This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of Louisville Magazine.
To subscribe to Louisville Magazine, please click here.
