The City of Plymouth will pay for a watershed study of a flood-prone area. The Board of Works gave a conditional approval Monday night to spend $27,600 to look at the area of Lincolnway East, Kingston Avenue, Jefferson Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, as soon as the money is found in the city’s budget. Area residents have expressed concerns over drainage problems. Plymouth Wastewater Superintendent Donnie Davidson says the city needs to know what is there in order to fix it properly.
He says the proposed study will take a comprehensive look at existing conditions, volume and capacities. Computer models will also be used to study recent storm events and determine how they affected the drainage infrastructure.
Davidson says this data would be used to ensure any new infrastructure is adequate to handle a 50 or 100 year storm event. He cautions there’s always potential for a storm that will exceed that capacity.
“All this study would proposed to do is determine where our deficiencies are if any, how we are compatible with the waters that we’re sharing with the county as far as sharing the same sewers and the capacities within our detention basins,” Davidson said.
He adds there is money in the budget for the work, it’s just a matter of figuring out which funds to use. Davidson notes the entire area needs to be evaluated at once in order to provide a comprehensive overview of the area.
The study will be done within 60 days. Davidson adds the city has limited control over things like branches and debris from private property that get into sewer pipes and may restrict flow and drainage.
