For more than 75 years, the town of Ellettsville has struggled to figure out how to address flooding along Jack’s Defeat Creek.
The board of trustees of Richland Township will consider issuing bonds to fund the construction of a new building Sept. 28 after its building flooded Sept. 8. It was the fourth time in seven years, according to Richland Township Trustee Marty Stephens. The other floods at its 102 S. Park St. office occurred in 2009, 2012 and 2013.
Around 2012, the trustee’s office found black mold in the building and had to have it professionally removed.
After each flood, the trustee’s office had to throw away the food in its food pantry due to contamination. It went through extensive cleaning procedures. It emptied the building, removed carpets and drywall, contracted a company to remove water and dry the building. It took several weeks to get it all done and disrupted services provided by the trustee’s office.
“It’s gotten to the point that you have to make a change of some kind,” Stephens said.
The trustee’s office, including its food pantry, was closed for 18 days following the Sept. 8 flooding.
“This is actually a shorter period because we are anticipating a successful conclusion to the (Ellettsville) Board of Zoning Appeals and to the bond issue,” Stephens said. “We are not going to take up the carpet this time, which will cut probably about three weeks off of this.”
Bynum Fanyo, the company managing the building project, petitioned the Ellettsville Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) for a use variance on the property at the corner of Park Street and Ritter Street. The township already owns the land, which sits on a hill by the baseball diamonds at Marci Jane Lewis Park. BZA will review the petition Oct. 18.
“We’re being told if all goes well, (Bynum Fanyo) would hope to award a bid by Dec. 31. Then, depending on the weather, they would try to begin work,” Stephens said.
He estimated work on the building, which would be similar in size to the current office, would begin in the first quarter of 2017 in this scenario.
If approved, the trustee’s office building would be the fourth built in response to flooding.
Ellettsville Streets Department Foreman Kip Headdy said the water was probably about 10 inches deep at the trustee’s office.
Though the streets department is next door to the trustee’s office, not much of the water made it inside. Its part of the building is at a higher elevation than the trustee’s office and the water was about two inches lower. Headdy theorized that the exterior seals on the streets department’s doors also helped prevent flooding.
During the June 1993 flood, the fire station was in the location the streets department occupies today. The police station was at the current location of the trustee’s office in the same building. Some people called that flood the worst since 1940.
The Ellettsville Journal described the April 1940 flood as “the worst in history.” It did $433,188 in damages, adjusted for inflation, and flooded 30 homes and 21 businesses. In that article, there is a reference to a flood that happened during March 1939, but it predates The Journal.
About 24 inches of water got into the fire station during another flood in October 1993, according to then Fire Chief Jim Davis.
“(The police station) had substantial loss when there was that really bad flood,” said Ellettsville Clerk-Treasurer Sandra Hash. “At that time, they lost computers, cameras, radios, and all kinds of stuff.”
Hash said the police moved out of the building and into a trailer by the blue streets department building on Matthews Drive. They were there for a year or more, she added.
At an Oct. 27, 1993, Ellettsville Town Council meeting, then Town Engineer Jeff Fanyo said culverts needed to be bigger and ditches needed to be cleaned and widened. He also encouraged Ellettsville residents to form a county drainage board.
Ultimately, the town built new fire and police stations outside of the floodplain for approximately $2 million each.
Ellettsville has flooded six times since 1993.
During December 2013, the old town hall at 221 N. Sale St. flooded for the second time in as many years. Eighteen to 24 inches of water got into the building, destroying many of the Ellettsville Utilities Department’s records. What was left was wet and mildewed.
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Hash said. “Before, we always dried out and made do.”
Cleaning up the old building, preparing to move and moving into a temporary office at Eagles Landing cost the town $44,670. But mold in that office drove staff out and into their current location.
The town council gave preliminary approval for the construction of a new town hall in September 2015. That is expected to be finished late this year or early 2017.
In fall 2014, the town implemented part of a plan suggested by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when it dredged the creek. But it didn’t get as deep as it wanted.
It also purchased the land between State Road 46 and Hartstrait Road with the intention of building a retention area to stop some of the water before it got to downtown Ellettsville.
Still working on the issue in July 11, 2016, the town council held a work session. At that meeting, it continued a discussion it started with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in 2013. It was given a presentation by David Knipe, DNR Division of Water engineering section manager.
He focused on four problem areas: McNeely Street, the Main Street bridge, Vine Street and the pasture between Temperance Street and Hartstrait Road.
“It’s indicative of quite a bit of risk there. That’s one of the reasons that we wanted to choose Ellettsville for this project,” Knipe said. “Because we knew that there was some ongoing risk there and we knew that there were some things that needed to be addressed.”
Knipe told the council that flooding in Ellettsville could only be mitigated, not stopped, because of the path of Jack’s Defeat Creek. He estimated from preliminary modeling that projects at each of the four problem sites could reduce flooding by up to 2.5 feet.
Knipe presented several ideas at the meeting, though it was unclear if they would be possible at the time.
On McNeely Street, he wondered if a set of culverts under the street and excavation up and downstream would help water flow. In the computer modeling, they put culverts under the McNeely Street bridge and dug out the ground on either side of it. Those adjustments dropped the water elevation a little more than 1.5 feet but only from McNeely Street to Main Street
He suggested digging out the third span of the Main Street bridge, which would allow for more water flow underneath it. Doing so would result in a 0.2-foot reduction in water elevation. However, utilities located in the third span presented a challenge.
The area of Vine Street his team looked at was east of Turning Point Apostolic Church to Village Inn. There, Knipe suggested the town could excavate to lower the land around the creek and help water escape to White River faster. Some buildings in the industrial zone would have to be removed to accommodate the project. The project could reduce water flow by as much as two feet and would serve as a “significant fix,” according to the meeting minutes.
Between Temperance Street and Hartstrait Road, he suggested building water detention ponds. These would be dry, except during high water events, and collect water before it gets to town. The team didn’t allow for much storage in its modeling but saw water elevation drop a foot at McNeely Street and half a foot elsewhere in town. A challenge faced here is that there isn’t much area or depth to build on above the creek. Building below the creek would establish full-time ponds, which wouldn’t help.
The town owns all the properties discussed, except for the Vine Street area.
All projects would require the town to take into consideration many factors. Among those factors are cost, ecological impact, gathering of permits, and private properties.
“It’s kind of a balancing act,” Knipe said.
One potential ally in the process is a group of federal and state agencies focused on floodplain management called Silver Jackets. Knipe said the organization excels at finding funding for similar projects. It could also help provide procedural feedback.
Funding for the modeling project was provided, in part, by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Town Councilor Brian Mobley, who owns one of the buildings flooded on Sept. 8, suggested at the council’s Sept. 12 meeting that a flood mitigation committee be formed. He has since formed the committee, which is made up of business owners most impacted by the flood.
Those business owners include: Carl Thurman of Thurman Body Shop; Chad Stephens of Chad’s LLC on McNeely Street; Mike and Mae Cassady, who own storage units near Jack’s Defeat Creek; and Mobley himself.
He and Town Engineer Rick Coppock pushed the council Sept. 26 to proceed with some projects they’d discussed, including raising the sidewalk on N. Sale Street in front of Ellettsville Computer Repair, installing culverts under McNeely Street, and building a retention area where the old sewer plant used to be on McNeely Street.
“It’s time for us to get something done,” Mobley said.
The Richland Township Board of Trustees will meet at the Richland Township Trustee’s Office Sept. 28 at 5 p.m. Ellettsville Board of Zoning Appeals will meet at the Ellettsville Fire Department in the conference and training room Oct. 18 at 5:30 p.m. Knipe said he will likely be back to talk to the town council in November.
Originally published in Ellettsville Journal, 2016. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.