GREEN RIVER — Storm drainage concerns were brought forth during the Green River City Council meeting on Feb. 6, as some residents have struggled with a build up of ice on certain streets in the city.
Resident Kevin Kinney said he lives on Elk Mountain Circle, and experiences a safety hazard on his street each year when the snow melts and then refreezes. He said that the snow melts in 32 to 35 degree temperatures, and all the water from Bridger Avenue and Hitching Post goes down into residential streets like Elk Mountain Circle where it freezes again and leaves large areas of ice.
“The ice had gone all the way over the sidewalk, 20 feet past the mailbox, and easily 10 to 12 feet onto the street,” Kinney said of one of the recent refreezes. “It’s a safety hazard.”
He said that when the ice melts on his street, it then travels down to Medicine Bow Drive and further down the hill and becomes problems on those streets.
“Sooner or later, the postal service is going to have a problem, someone is going to slip and fall. There needs to be a drain right there on that corner, or above me. That’s way too long of a stretch with no drain,” he said.
His question was how much it would cost to build some drains in that area, and whether the fees residents pay for storm and sewer drains goes toward construction. Public Works Director Mark Westenskow said it is not a simple solution. Stand alone drain projects are hard to fund, according to Westenskow, and that is why they try to pair those projects with road projects.
Westenskow said the city had a storm master plan done a few years ago to help determine where the city needed to install more drains. While the north side of town has a lot of drains, there’s not enough of them on the south side of town. Westenskow said that it looks like they were installed only where they absolutely needed them, which isn’t enough.
The challenge the city runs into when installing drains is they have to start from the bottom, as they have to have somewhere for the water and run off to go. When the city rebuilds a street, they look at where they can bring the storm line up higher, and they did that on Hitching Post. Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to get it to the next neighborhood, Westenskow said.
Kinney pointed out that he pays a $4 storm drain fee, and he wondered where that money goes. Westenskow said the sewer drainage fees were established a few years ago, and that money goes into a general fund and are used to offset maintenance and operation of storm drains, culverts, and ditches. According to Westenskow, there is a significant expense each year for the maintenance of those. Through the storm master plan, the city identified several storm projects and as they get a chance to rebuild those roads, they will be able to incorporate storm elements into those projects.
