Mayfield Village Seeks Answers to Flood Problems

Service Director Douglas Metzung said too much storm water is getting into sanitary sewers and causing backups into basements.

"We have many mains that are close together. It's typical to have the storm sewer higher than the sanitary sewer," Metzung said a a village council caucus meeting Monday. "If it finds it's way into the storm sewer it will go into the sanitary lateral, there's no getting around that."

He said most areas that have flooded have been hit two or three times this year. To solve the problem, he said the village is taking incremental steps to identify leaks and clear obstructions.

Metzung said county workers recently came out with sewer jets and cleaned lines on Ridgebury Boulevard and Oakwood Drive.

"To me the most perplexing one is the Ridgebury area. That's been going on for years," Metzung said. He said Mayfield Heights was removed from that line, which should have enough capacity to handle the volume from Mayfield Village.

"I think there we might find something wrong that's pretty obvious," Metzung said.

He said the village, which contracts with the county for storm sewers, might also sign on for sanitary sewers and get the county to snake the lines. He said residents who have a lot of trees might want to get on a program to have their lines cleaned every six months.

Council President William Buckholtz cautioned that village officials will take their time coming up with solutions because they don't want to move problems down the line.

"Fixing it in one area may be ruining it in another," he said.

Metzung also said that part of the problem is the increasing number of storms producing a large amount of water in a short period of time. He said he didn't want to get involved in the debate about whether climate change is real, but there's no denying the increase in heavy rains.

"Statistically, we're getting more of those 100-year storms every year," he said.