News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
A Monterey resident is blaming the city after his business flooded for the fourth time.
More than a foot of water seeped into Bowman’s Auto Sales Wednesday morning and owner Terry Bowman said he’s getting tired of the cleanup process.
“Needless to say, it’s ruined all of my sheet rock. I’m gonna have to have everything cut out and fixed. It got in my wife’s flower shop building and messed the floor up in it,” Bowman said. “I’ve got another building that I just bought beside the car lot and we are remodeling it right now. “I’d hate to put another business in with this water problem that we’ve had for years.”
Bowman said the flooding keeps occurring because of the city has not addressed a failing drainage system that crosses his property on Commercial Avenue.
“I’ve been to meetings and talked to them about getting it fixed, but they’ve always got the excuse of not having money to do this project with,” Bowman said. “They’re still talking about building boat ramps and places to rent canoes out on Clarkrange Highway, but they can’t take care of the infrastructure. I just think it’s time for something to be done.”
Monterey Mayor Bill Wiggins said the particular area has flooded for many years because the drainage system is not adequate to handle the flow of water.
Wiggins said the board of mayor and aldermen addressed the issue some time back, but never made a decision after learning of the expense. The mayor estimated the price to fix the drainage system to be over a half million dollars.
“We still have our engineer who stands ready to come up with what he thinks might work,” Wiggins said. “It’s pretty complicated and if the board wants to tackle this particular issue and if we can come up with funding for that, I’m all go.”
The drainage system begins at Old Walton Road and goes under East Commercial, through Bowman’s property, and under the railroad tracks. From there, the storm water makes it way to Industrial Drive and goes under Interstate 40 to a body of water known as Pettys Dam.
Wiggins said the project to repair the drainage system would need to be conducted backwards, starting at Pettys Dam and ending at Old Walton Road.
“Otherwise you are going to flood other parties who have been fairly dry so far,” Wiggins said. “It has to start downstream and work backwards towards Old Walton Road.”
Wiggins said the issue involves many players, including the county, city, railroad company, and TDOT.
In the meantime, other city officials are working to find a temporary fix. Monterey Alderman JJ Reels said there are several issues that need to be addressed before the city can ultimately fix the flooding with a permanent solution.
“There’s three culverts from the park going to the railroad and only one is draining. The size of the ditch may not be capable of carrying that amount of water so environmental needs to approve us expanding or deepening the ditches,” Reels said. “There’s a section of the ditch that is overgrown with undergrowth and trees that needs to be cleaned out to allow a greater amount of runoff.”
Reels said the city should be able to reduce the flooding by addressing those issues. He plans to meet with environmental next week to discuss the issue.
