CHICKASHA – Expenditures totaling almost $800,000 to prevent flooding in low-lying areas of the community and to improve water pressure on the east side of town were approved recently by the City Council.
The city will pay Union Pacific $25,790 for an easement to install a water main beneath the railroad tracks on Ada Lois Sipuel Avenue.
A 16-inch-diameter water main enclosed in a 24-inch steel pipe casing will be buried under the Union Pacific tracks, records indicate. The new main will connect a dead-end line to an existing water line, thereby “looping” the system, Fire Chief Tony Samaniego said. Doing so will increase water pressure “in everything east of Fourth Street,” he said.
In a related matter, Samaniego told the council that city crews have replaced three aged fire hydrants and repaired a fourth on the east side of town, and another three or four hydrants will be repaired soon.
The council also voted unanimously to pay $755,000 for 30 acres in The Woodlands, Section II, for use as a stormwater detention pond. The land is located, roughly, between the Dollar General store on Grand Avenue, Morrow Drive and Orchard Drive, and W. Park Avenue.
A detention pond temporarily stores stormwater runoff and releases it gradually until it’s completely drained.
“Through our partnership with the Fleske Development Group, we are able to purchase the pond on his property that was constructed … to catch water during construction” and was excavated deeper “to provide fill dirt for other site work,” Community Development Director Rachel Bernish informed the City Council on April 1.
The land acquisition will be financed with $500,000 included in the city’s Fiscal Year 2023-24 budget, coupled with $255,000 from oil/gas royalty payments that have been set aside, City Manager Keith Johnson said.
City Hall also has asked Congressman Tom Cole to request a federal budget earmark that would address drainage issues in Chickasha, Johnson told Southwest Ledger.
A comprehensive Master Drainage Study that the SRB engineering firm submitted to the council in 2021 relates that as Chickasha has grown in population and has experienced urbanization, “[T]he resulting impacts of localized and sustained flooding, water quality issues, and erosion have increased significantly.”
Line Creek, which flows through the northern section of town, and Congo Creek, which flows through the southern and eastern sections, “have caused extensive flooding.”
Assessments were developed for 19 watersheds that contribute stormwater runoff which flows through, and to the west and southwest of, Chickasha to the Washita River, SRB reported.
The city has “a history of flooding, resulting from sustained and long-duration rainfall events,” SRB noted. More than one-third of the town is “located in Special Flood Hazard Area, which results in areas and intersections … being routinely closed due to anticipated flooding…” Localized flooding also has been blamed on the “condition and inefficiency” of the municipal storm sewer system, SRB reported.
In 2022, SRB Engineer Theresa Lennox “advised that the study calls for the need to create more storage and the need to clean out the drainage routes we already have in order to slow the water down and prevent the ponding effect of water in our low-lying areas,” such as the Grady County Fairgrounds and the downtown business district.