After weeks of heavy rain, Carmel residents might be wondering when changes will take place to help alleviate flooding concerns in certain parts of town.
City officials say the newly created Storm Water District Board has several projects in place that should help fix the problem in Carmel’s hardest hit area – such as Emerson Road – but the work will take time. Jeremy Kashman, city engineer and director of the Storm Water District, said it’s a big project with several phases.
In the meantime, the city is also helping educate residents about other ways to help alleviate flooding. Free rain barrels are regularly given away. Sand bags were given out by the county in mid-June to help. And surveys and educational components are a key part of the process as well.
“The biggest thing is learning what people have learned about storm water and where they learned it,” Kashman said. “We can find out which parts of our outreach efforts are working.”
The actual Storm Water Board – made up of members of the Carmel City Council – has had some slowdowns though due to a lack of quorum at a few meetings. Kashman said it hasn’t caused a catastrophe. Some councilors expressed their frustration though.
“We’ve had some scheduling conflicts in terms of getting everyone together and getting quorum,” Kashman said.
Kashman said the city just wrapped up a drainage study for the Midtown area and information from that has been very helpful on how to proceed with future and existing developments.
“We’re actually using that study to come up with a solution for the Emerson Road drainage problem,” he said. “That was taking a long at what we have infrastructure-wise, looking at what the capacity is and make sure we’re not doing anything down there that’s going to cause us problems later.”
In addition, there’s a culvert under Carmel Drive at the Monon crossing that the city is possibly looking to replace. There’s also a large culver on Ralston Avenue, south of 116th Street, that needs to be replaced, Kashman said.
