Hoover council OKs $3 million road and dam repair, annexation of Riverchase Country Club
The Hoover City Council on Monday voted to proceed with a $3 million repair of a road and dam in the Riverchase community and to annex the 192-acre Riverchase Country Club to pay for it over the next 30 or so years.
The problem is on Lake Forest Circle, a city street with a dam underneath it that is owned by the Riverchase Country Club. The dam and street both were damaged significantly in connection with the heavy downpours of rain in October 2021, leaving a gaping hole in the street.
While the dam and property beneath the road are on private property, the Riverchase Country Club cannot afford to pay to fix the problem, City Administrator Allan Rice said. Thus, the section of the road that goes across the dam has remained closed for more than a year.
The city could opt to do nothing and leave that section of road closed, Rice said. However, the city has a sanitary sewer line that is within the dam, and if nothing is done to repair the dam, it will continue to erode, eventually impacting the sewer line and threatening environmental damage to the immediate area as well as the Cahaba River and communities along it downstream, Rice said.
The city tried to get federal money to help fix the problem, but Alabama is the only state in the nation that not have dam regulations that would allow the city to access federal funding for dam repairs, Rice said.
The state also does not have funding available to fix this problem, so city officials decided to partner with the Riverchase Country Club and Riverchase Residential Association to do the repairs, he said.
According to an agreement approved by the Hoover City Council Monday night, the Riverchase Residential Association will pay $150,000 toward the repairs, and the city will pay the remainder of the repair cost, which is expected to amount to about $2,850,000.
Meanwhile, the Riverchase Country Club agreed to have its property annexed into the city.
That annexation will allow the city to recoup its investment in the dam and road repair through property taxes, sales taxes, business license fees and other taxes that the city otherwise would not receive, Rice said.
“We will recover those funds,” Rice said. “It could take 30 years to recover those funds, but we will recover them.”
Also, the city will continue to collect those new tax revenues in perpetuity, and Hoover City Schools also will benefit from property taxes earmarked for education, he said.
Several residents questioned how the city can spend money to fix damage on private property in this situation but not do more to correct stormwater drainage problems in other parts of the city that also involve private property.
William Cary, a resident of Southlake, said people in his community have been dealing with stormwater erosion and sewer overflow problems for a long time that have been affecting both individual property owners and Indian Valley Lake.
Southlake residents have been paying taxes for 31 years and can’t get help from the city to correct their problems, Cary said. He said he was glad to see this action because it sets a precedent that the city is willing to do work on private property.
A resident of the Paradise Acres community off John Hawkins Parkway complained that Paradise Lake has been filling up with sediment washed from upstream, yet no one is stepping up to remedy that problem.
Rice said what makes this Riverchase repair job “materially different” than other situations around town is that the other situations don’t involve annexation or public infrastructure or have a “public purpose” connected to them.
Also, the Riverchase Country Club is not on firm financial footing and is up for sale, Rice said. If these repairs are not made, a potential sale of the country club will not go through and the club could have to shut down, having a very negative impact on the community, he said.