02-26-18 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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REGULAR MEETING February 26, 2018 Sharon McBride. As I told her on the phone Saturday, she is joining the Council at a time when cooperation with the Administration is strong and at a time when the Council's role will be more important than ever given the challenges and opportunities ahead.As Councilmember Kelly comes off the Council,I want to sincerely thank him for his public service and wish him well as he returns to the community as a private citizen. I also want to thank everyone who played a role in our response to the flood emergency. Eric Horvath will provide a more detailed update shortly but I want to thank all the personnel in my office and throughout the Administration, as well as our Council and our Intergovernmental partners for their quick response. I have shown the affected area to Senator Donnelly, Congresswoman Walorski and Governor Holcomb and will continue working with them to seek disaster aid where available. Our main concern, now, is to accurately tally storm damage and to address the condition of roads and parks as the waters recede. Meanwhile, we are preparing for the State of the City Address to be had on March 13th, 2018 and look forward to updating you and the community that evening at Adams High School. See you soon. Eric Horvath, Director of Public Works for the City of South Bend with offices on the 13th floor of the County-City Building, South Bend, IN, addressed the Council. Mr. Horvath stated, Good evening, Council. Welcome Councilmember McBride, I look forward to working with you. I will give a quick update and then answer any questions now or later if the Council would like. We had a historic flooding event that occurred here and we are still in the midst of seeing the waters recede. We are currently at a river gage depth of about nine point eight (9.8) feet. We do not expect it to be eight (8) feet until Wednesday at about 4:00 p.m. It is slowly receding. The issue is we've got a large watershed. It is about 4,700 square miles which is double the size of Delaware. That, coupled with the frozen ground, results in everything melting and hitting the river very quickly. We are normally under warmer conditions and the Earth usually acts as a sponge but it is all hitting the river very quickly. We crested at twelve point seven (12.7) feet on Thursday morning at 1:30 a.m. Prior to that, our historic record crest was ten point nine (10.9) feet, so we are a couple feet higher than our previous historic record. To give you an idea of where that is, our tenth (10th) largest crest in South Bend's history was six point nine (6.9) feet. This is considerably more than we've ever had in at least the recorded time. It is well over the 500 year flood level so it was a really significant event. The streets we still have closed now are Riverside East from Marion to Michigan, Riverside West from Michigan to Lafayette, Buckhorn from Carroll to Buckhom, Northside Boulevard from Sample to 20th and then some of the streets that go north off of Northside. As of right now we've had three hundred and fifteen (315) reports of flood damage in the County. Of that, one hundred and eighty (180) of those are from South Bend. We've got seventeen(17)parks and trails areas that are currently closed along with the roads I just mentioned. Our drinking water was safe the entire time. We did have some water coming in our North Main plant but were able to keep everything operating without having any excursions on the drinking water. Mr. Horvath continued, On the wastewater side of things, there was just so much now that it overwhelmed parts of the plant including the chlorine area which is still a couple feet under water. The water got so high that, hydraulically, the water couldn't even get out of the plant and we couldn't push any water out. On Wednesday February 21 st,2018 at 9:00 p.m.we had to completely close the plant. That doesn't mean we blocked off the sewers, it just means they overflowed into the river at that time and we didn't treat any of it until about 6:00 a.m. the next morning. For the most part we have been able to continue operating at fifty(50)million gallons a day. We are taking all of the direct sewer flow, mostly from the I/N Tek and I/N Kote lines, that has not combined with clean water and we are treating that. In addition to that, we are taking about fifteen percent (15%) of the combined sewage off of the main interceptor line. We are going to see this continue being an issue for a number of days. The issue right now is that the river is coming back into the sewer system. The valves that close aren't super tight and they are not used to having this much hydraulic head so we are actually getting river water into those main lines. We will see that for a number of days. The treatment plant is back up and running. We are moving from the emergency response mode to the recovery mode. We will see, in the next number of days, many of the staff out and working on those infrastructure issues. We ask everyone if there are major infrastructure issues, call 311 to report it and we will look into it. If you have private property damage, we encourage you to call 574-235-9378 which is the Emergency Management Agency(EMA) for St. 2