City Of Mentor Plans To Improve Retention Basin By Route 2 Exit On Center Street

The city is continuing to take steps to improve its drainage after record rainfalls led to a series of last year.

The city's next improvement involves the detention basin at the southeast corner of the Route 2 exit onto Center Street. The Ohio Department of Transportation owns the basin right now, but an agreement is in place for ODOT to turn over ownership of it to the city.

"(ODOT's) hoping to make the transfer this winter, hopefully by February," Mentor City Engineer David Swiger.

When the city takes ownership of the basin, it does not intend to increase the basin's existing capacity. Instead, it plans to make better use of the capacity the basin already has, Mentor City Manager Kenneth Filipiak said.

The basin can hold 48 acre-feet of water now. (An acre-foot is acre of area and a foot of depth.) However, with some changes to the basin's discharge pipe, it could hold an additional 16 acre-feet during major storms, Swiger said.

The basin's problem is that it drains too quickly. Instead of retaining water and using its full capacity, the basin drains it into a storm sewer system that dumps the water into Martin Ohm Creek.

That same pipe system also drains many of the residential neighborhoods nearby like Mentor Wood, Edgewood and Fairfax. If the basin used more of its capacity, it would take pressure off of this part of the city's stormwater system.

Swiger said those areas did report some flooding from stormwater backup during . Improving the basin's capacity would decrease the likelihood of flooding in those neighborhoods.

The basin does not drain much of Route 2 despite its nearness to the interstate, Filipiak added.

The city of Mentor would alter the basin's 24-inch outflow pipe by covering part of its entrance, Swiger said. This would slow the flow of water during major storms.

Filipiak said the project would not be very expensive because most of the project's work could be done in house.

"It doesn't need a lot of modication," Filipiak said. "And we can get some immediate benefits from changing that discharge pipe."

The city is pursuing this project, as opposed to ODOT, because local drainage is not part of the state agency's purview, Filipiak said,

"As soon as we can take ownership, we'll be able to go in there and make those changes," Filipiak said.