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Hoover council declares U.S. 31 flooding near Riverchase Village a public safety hazard (video)

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Photo courtesy of city of Hoover

Photo courtesy of city of Hoover

Photo by Jon Anderson

Photo by Jon Anderson

The Hoover City Council on Monday night declared a stormwater drainage problem near the intersection of U.S. 31 and Lorna Road near the Riverchase Crossings shopping center to be a public safety hazard and public nuisance and directed two property owners to correct the problem.

Hoover City Administrator Allan Rice said the drainage problem on private property has caused substantial flooding on U.S. 31 on multiple occasions over many months, making half or all of the major thoroughfare impassable during heavy rain events.

The problem is that a stormwater drainage pipe that runs between Walgreens and the Panda Express restaurant has been collapsed for a long time, which led to the closure of the Panda Express drive-through and a fence being erected around it, Rice said.

TREA Riverchase Village, the owner of the Riverchase Village shopping center, since that time has been pumping stormwater out of the underground storm sewer system through an above-ground pipe that runs between Walgreens and Panda Express and depositing the water at a storm drain on the state right of way along U.S. 31, Rice said.

“That inlet is not designed for that,” Rice said. “That’s not where that water was intended to go. It won’t take the volume.”

During heavy rains, U.S. 31 is flooding, and Hoover police are having to block the highway and redirect traffic elsewhere because it has become a public safety hazard and public nuisance, Rice said.

Motorists shouldn’t be denied use of U.S. 31, and Hoover police shouldn’t be put at avoidable risk by blocking a major road, he said.

The property that contains the Walgreens and Panda Express is owned by Rogina Investment Corp., and that company and TREA Riverchase Village are involved in litigation regarding who is responsible for repairs, and that litigation seems to be locked down without any progress toward resolution, Rice said.

“I think it’s going to take regulatory action on the part of the city to try to get that ball rolling,” Rice told the council at its work session this past Thursday.

The Hoover City Council on Monday night authorized the city attorney to take civil action to abate the public nuisance.

Aaron McLeod, an attorney for TREA Riverchase Village, told the City Council before it voted that the city itself is contributing a substantial amount of stormwater runoff from Lorna Road and Data Drive into the shopping center’s stormwater system.

The city bears a significant amount of responsibility for the use or misuse of the failed stormwater pipe and expense of any repairs, McLeod said.

Wilson Green, an attorney for Rogina Investment Corp., said that company’s position is that the water running through the pipe on its property is not coming from Rogina’s property, but from TREA Riverchase Village’s property and from public rights of way.

Rogina Investment believes the storm sewer system there is a publicly dedicated system and is being publicly used, Green said. Rogina believes it is inappropriate to declare this problem a public nuisance because it’s the city’s responsible to operate and maintain that system.

In other business Monday night, the Hoover City Council authorized the mayor to apply for federal assistance with flood mitigation for any residential properties that appear to be eligible for such assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

This would allow any homeowners who believe their flooding situation is so bad that their property qualifies to be bought out by the government to apply for such relief, Rice said. A homeowner must meet certain criteria to qualify, and city officials will begin sharing that information soon, he said.

Rice said city engineers believe there probably are only about 12 to 15 homes in Hoover that might qualify to be bought out, based on previous observations.

For properties that the federal governments deems are qualified, the federal government would pay 75% of the cost for flood mitigation, and the city and/or the property owner would be responsible for the other 25%, Rice said.

The Hoover City Council also on Monday agreed to pay Avery Landscape & Associates $244,243 to repair a sewer main and Inverness Point Lake spillway at the Inverness Nature Park, just south of the Inverness Point subdivision.

During a rain even in the past year, the spillway on park property washed away, causing sediment erosion onto adjacent property and leaving the sewer main line sagging and exposed, City Engineer Chris Reeves said.

The sewer line is not leaking, but it needs to be stabilized, and the spillway needs to be restored and sediment erosion remediated, Reeves said.

Avery Landscape & Associates should be able to start the project within the first two weeks of October and has 60 days to complete it, he said.

The City Council also:

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