STARKVILLE — Recent storms and flooding took center stage at a local government meeting for the second time this week at Tuesday’s board of aldermen meeting.
The board tabled a request for a conditional use permit to build duplexes on three lots northeast of the intersection of South Lafayette Street and Gillespie Street. The land is not on a floodplain but is just across the street from one, City Engineer Edward Kemp said.
Aldermen want to be absolutely certain the plans for the property adhered to the city’s stormwater ordinance, updated last year and effective as of September. It requires new developments to provide stormwater mitigation to withstand a 100-year storm event, or 9.4 inches of rain over 24 hours. The region has experienced several episodes of constant rainfall over more than 24 hours each in the past few months.
During the public hearing for the conditional use request, Charles Ware told the board the development would cause the west side of Lafayette Street — where some of his relatives live — to flood more than it already does.
“Concrete doesn’t absorb water like dirt,” Ware told The Dispatch. “If you’re going to build a huge concrete path upon that hill, you may put (in) underground storage of water, but the water’s got to go someplace, and that hill’s going to be sloped from east to west.”
Jason Pepper of Pepper Surveying and Mapping told the board he and his client who owns the property are aware of the stormwater ordinance and intend to follow it.
Kemp said the intent is for the development to detain stormwater underground and release it at a rate the drainage system can handle.
“We’re not saying we’re going to fix the (flooding) problem,” Kemp said. “We’re saying we’re not going to make it any worse.”
Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn said he was still unsure of this, and the board unanimously approved Ward 4 Alderman Jason Walker’s proposal to table the request until the next meeting.
The decision was a necessary precaution, Ward 5 Alderman Hamp Beatty told The Dispatch after the meeting.
“We’re getting rain events now that our system can’t handle, and as Starkville builds and develops, it’s going to continue to happen,” Beatty said. “We’ve just got to be careful and make sure that we do it right.”
Addressing and mitigating the impact of storms on the community was the primary topic of discussion at Monday’s Oktibbeha County supervisors as well. The county has spent months considering joining the Tombigbee River Valley Water Management District, a state agency that does flood control, cleanup and repair projects on waterways of all sizes. Citizens came forward with concerns about the impacts of heavy rains and floods on their property, but the board of supervisors did not reach an agreement on whether to join the water management district.
Severe weather patterns and events will likely become more frequent thanks to climate change, and the city’s best bet is to be prepared both financially and in terms of the stormwater ordinance, which goes “about as far as any other city has gone,” Mayor Lynn Spruill said.
“We can’t ever totally get to the point where we can mitigate an event of the magnitude that we had in 2019,” she said. “We had two days where it rained four inches more than it had ever rained before. You can only do so much.”
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