Cookeville to Address Capshaw Storm Runoff

The City of Cookeville will study ways to ease storm runoff in the Capshaw area north of Broad Street.

Water and Sewer Department Director Ronnie Kelly said with recent storms, some lines in that area have overloaded.

“We have different sewer basins that feed into that trunk line,” Kelly said. “We’re looking at everything that’s feeding into that trunk line and what’s our options to relieve that hydraulic stress that we’re receiving during these extreme storm events.”

The Cookeville City Council approved a $125,000 study at its Thursday night meeting.= to look at the problem. Kelly said that sewer lines are not designed to receive the amount of rainwater Cookeville has received in recent months.

“In February we had six inches of rain in a couple of days,” Kelly said. “Sanitary sewer lines are supposed to be for sanitary sewer. Due to their construction, they have cracks, they get broken, and lots of things happening, and so rainwater or groundwater gets in. So, with those events, you get too much water in and you basically take up all the capacity of the pipe.”

Kelly said the study will consider at a number of options to relieve the stress on the pipes in the Capshaw area.

“There will be a lot of flow monitoring,” Kelly said. “There will be a lot of modeling done, and basically you start walking through what options are. Do we want to build storage basins that you only use during surge events? Do you want to store the water and then put it back in? That’s what you see a lot, and that’s one possibility. Do we move some of those basins off of that trunk line and move it to a different basin?”

Kelly said the city has to be careful of any changes the city makes to the sewer system to prevent other areas from overloading.