Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 19, 1994 TAG: 9408190035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A detention pond designed to capture the storm water from the new homes in two Salem developments has become a sore spot for neighbors living below it. They say it's created an eyesore that breeds mosquitoes and ruins their back yards when it rains.
The city is committed to fixing the problem, Mayor Jim Taliaferro said, but can't stop new development that meets all requirements.
"What can you do - say you can't ever build upstream just because there's a house downstream?"
The detention pond at the end of Olde Salem Drive is designed to fill with the rainwater that falls in two or three hours in the subdivisions and release it over, say, a 24-hour period.
The drainage ditch it releases into - a wide grassy strip between two cul-de-sacs in an older development - always had a stream from up the hill flowing through it for a few days after it rained. But since the new subdivisions were built, residents say the water can flow for more than a week.
After a recent heavy rain, Inge Circle resident Betty Pugh said, "It looked like Niagara Falls when it came over the spillway."
The city engineer believes the problem isn't that bad.
"My personal opinion is, the situation is the same or better than it was before the development," John Abbott said.
As Wednesday's rain slowed, a chorus of frogs called to each other and dragonflies darted across the surface of the muddy, trash-strewn detention pond. It was built by Fralin & Waldron for its Meadowrun subdivision and also is used by the newest section of Olde Salem Estates, being developed by Wayne Ayers.
Water from the subdivisions rushed into the pond from a huge pipe. At the other end, water poured out of another pipe, creating a muddy stream - 8 feet wide in places - through the back yards of houses in the Karen Hills subdivision as it made its way to the drainage ditch.
Andy Kelderhouse, vice president of Fralin & Waldron, said the pond should not be holding water like it is except when it rains; it should be a grassy basin that holds only clean water during storms.
He wants the city to pressure Ayers to clean out the silt that's run in to the pond during the past months of construction - the pond is holding only one-third of what it should because of the sediment, he said. The city won't give final approval to the Fralin & Waldron subdivision, which is finished, until the pond is fixed and a fence is in place.
Ayers said he plans to dredge some of the sediment from the pond when the weather gets better, which should help it hold more water.
The pipe that flows out of the pond faces into Pugh's back yard on Inge Circle, only a few feet beyond her property line. She has had her ranch on the market since March and said potential buyers look elsewhere after she tells them about the temporary stream in the back yard after each rain.
Pugh is trying to sell because of health problems, and said the water problems are adding to her stress. She has considered legal action, possibly under an old anti-trespassing law.
The water has bent a chain-link fence and a wooden privacy fence around her yard, which Abbott said should be removed because they act as dams across the ditch and slow the water flow. Pugh wants the fences to stay.
Judy Oliver, who also lives on Inge Circle, said she is concerned that children play around the detention pond, making it a hazard. She said a petition with 32 names was presented to the city complaining about the pond, but her husband said he has trouble getting city officials to come to the phone.
The pond will be cleaned up and fenced in when the subdivisions are finished, Abbott said.
"I guess the only thing that will make some of them happy is to remove the pond," he said. "But they'd be very unhappy next time it rains and a deluge comes down through there."
The city has tried to eliminate detention ponds, he said, but in certain areas there's no other alternative. There are about five in Salem.
"I wish we didn't have any. [But] all we can do is make sure they don't make matters worse," Abbott said. "The city is probably more stringent on those developers than we legally can require."
City Council last month approved the hiring of a consulting engineer to study some of the city's problem areas, including the Meadowrun pond.
"What's happened is growth is so fast, the technology of detention facilities has not kept up with it," the mayor said. "I think they're going to be more of a headache for localities than they ever dreamed they'd be."
City Council also has approved curbing and guttering an older section of Olde Salem Estates, next to Karen Hills, to the tune of $90,000 because ditches installed by the developer weren't working.
And the city will take care of the problems with the detention pond as well, Taliaferro said.
"We'll solve it, whatever it is."
by CNB