Saturday, July 25, 2015

Photogs Needed!


Greetings All!
Several months ago when the proposed assessment fee was being discussed, we had a representative from Craig A. Smith come to our monthly meeting (April) to explain the “plan” and to answer some questions.
In short, there were two points that stuck out in my mind. First, that he had little factual data regarding our situation and as such, was somewhat at a loss regarding specific recommendations. Further, he stated and I will paraphrase as best as I can remember, “if you do not have standing water after 12 hours, then you do not have a flooding problem. We live in South Florida, etc.”
With this in mind, I have been waiting to hear from our Staff as to when our existing storm water drains would be cleaned out before reaching out to you regarding this request. This has now been completed.
What we are trying to do is find a couple of residents who are willing to take “before-and-after” time stamped pictures of areas, (close to each) where standing water is perceived to be a problem. Preferably, we want to gather photos spanning a 12 hour interval… or as close to this as possible. This grass root sweat equity approach may provide the data necessary to determine what, and if any real flooding problems exist… and where. Since storm water flooding is not a Village wide issue, this should help to determine and isolate the areas where water remains after a 12 hour period.
So, at this point we have 2 residents that have signed on. A couple more would be helpful and provide a better overall Village wide analysis.  If any of your reading this live close to an area where standing water occurs and would be willing to gather photographic records, your efforts would be appreciated.
Please contact me via email and we can discuss this further.
Thanks in advance,
Milton Hunter

 

3 comments:

  1. Update,
    We now have 3 photo togs signed up. As I mentioned to one, the reason for the time stamp is to verify the data without prejudice.

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  2. Milt,

    119th Street is always a problem in heavy rain, as there was today. But it's not all of 119th Street. There are some bad spots between 7th and 8th, eastbound. I'm guessing all of that will be gone within 12 hours. We could conclude that if it's gone within 12 hours, then it's not a problem. But why is there this discrete significant puddling in those spots at all? If it's always only in those spots, doesn't that represent a problem the rest of the street doesn't seem to have? Wouldn't it benefit us to engineer the streets so none of them flood, as much of them don't? And today's rain was not super heavy. When it's heavier, those patches remain essentially impassable for a while.

    Fred

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  3. Fred,
    This didn't come from me- but directly from the engineer from Craig A. Smith. He explained what "storm water flooding" really is. And his point was that puddling [after a rain] does not qualify as street flooding. Moreover, and more importantly, what criteria I assume must be present in order to even qualify for any possible funding.

    Let's remember that the State just vetoed millions of dollar for storm water projects to include $675K from North Miami alone.

    Using his guidelines should help us to understand what to look for and isolate any areas that fit within the criteria for standing water.

    ReplyDelete