Flooding

[michaelskis]

http://www.miningjournal.net

http://www.mqtcty.org/images/Evac Area.pdf

My old apartment is all wet... What are your thoughts on flooding, dams, and such?

 

[Planderella]

New Orleans is several feet below sea level with many parts of the city built over swamp and water. It floods when there's a heavy 2+ hour rain. Insurance companies love us.

 

[Downtown]

What are your thoughts on flooding, dams, and such?

Living in Upstate New York, this is something I rarely think about.

 

[Jeff]

....flooding makes me laugh. Especially when the City of Phila just approved plans to build 100s of condos on an island in the middle of the Schuykill River.

We do it to ourselves you know.

 

[Chet]

I community I work for is 35.9 square miles and is 30% surface water. We've had three 100 year recurrence floods since 1997, and had a dam breach a few years ago also. We think about it quite a bit, actually.

Most people only look at 'Zone C' FIRM maps as a problem, but when you get into our predicament, you get down to nitty gritty detailed mapping of dam failure flood lines too. Ah the joys of lake life....

 

[SW MI Planner]

Kind of freaked out since my sister and her hubby had to evacuate their house.

 

[michaelskis]

Oh that's right....

I will be up in marquette next month, as it is, I would have had to evacuate my apartment on the corner of wright and Longyear.

I am going to try to get a hold of a few of my friends who live in the area. Lets just hope the second dam does not go.

 

[Jessie-J]

My parents have lived in the same house for about 30 years. When they moved into the house it was in a 150 year flood plain. 5 years ago the city re-zoned and they are now in a 15 year flood plain. Their insurance has skyrocketed and they've had to evacuate every October for the past 3 years. The city has bought some of the homes in the area (those that would be under 10+ feet of water). The problem is that the city keeps widening roads and adding roads to the area they live in. While it's not rural, the creek that runs near their home gets the runoff from all over the city.
It's been devistating to the worth of their home not to mention the stress of evacuating every year.

The city just announced a new plan to build a "flood wall" on the edge of the neighborhood. How ugly! What other solutions to problems like this have you come across?

 

[SkeLeton]

Here in Valdivia floodings are quite usual, specially in a part that's at the same level of the river, and when the river grows in winter it gets flooded...
My house is quite safe because it's at least 10 m above the sea and river level

 

[Cardinal]

My parents have lived in the same house for about 30 years. When they moved into the house it was in a 150 year flood plain. 5 years ago the city re-zoned and they are now in a 15 year flood plain. Their insurance has skyrocketed and they've had to evacuate every October for the past 3 years. The city has bought some of the homes in the area (those that would be under 10+ feet of water). The problem is that the city keeps widening roads and adding roads to the area they live in. While it's not rural, the creek that runs near their home gets the runoff from all over the city.
It's been devistating to the worth of their home not to mention the stress of evacuating every year.

The city just announced a new plan to build a "flood wall" on the edge of the neighborhood. How ugly! What other solutions to problems like this have you come across?

Couldn't the city just rezone them back into the 150-year flood plain?

You bring up an interesting point. Our flood maps are from the 1960's. At that time there was a lot less development, and even the farm fields tended to be pasture rather than tiled crop land. The flood boundaries have likely changed significantly.

For our part, we completed a $1.5 million storm water / flood mitigation project a couple years back, and this year will be working on the upper dam.

 

[Chet]

I other issue we have is that our regional sewerage commission dumps untreated or partially treated (they call it "blended") poopies into Lake Michigan everytime we get a 2" rainfall. They say its better to dump out of fear than to dump out of necessity. WTF?!

 

[pete-rock]

Chicago used to have a flooding problem until 100 years ago. That's when they jacked up the street level throughout the city by about ten feet, reversed the flow of the Chicago River, and called it a day. Why can't we do things like that anymore?

 

[Queen B]

I just Love the....But I haven't seen it ever flood there!
Or when I say to them, do you understand that when this floods there will be three feet of water as you step out your door?

I just shake my head....

Flooding bad, very bad....