A new concrete storm drain was installed to replace a deteriorated metal drainage pipe between Burntleaf Lane and Atkins-Trimm Circle on Atkins-Trimm Boulevard in November. The Hoover City Council has approved more than $2.5 million for emergency repairs to roads and drainage systems after heavy rainfall caused significant flooding in the city in October.

Photos courtesy of City of Hoover.

Photos submitted to the city of Hoover show stormwater flooding a residential property on Napier Drive on separate occasions.

No one denies the need for rain. It’s essential for life, but too much of it in too short a time can spell disaster.

That’s especially true if stormwater systems either aren’t designed or maintained properly.

A growing number of Hoover residents say that in recent years they’re having to deal with stormwater problems more frequently than in the past, flooding both yards and homes at an alarming rate.

Some residents blame developers or the city for stormwater systems that, for whatever reason, aren’t able to handle the downpours. City engineers acknowledge they’ve gotten a record number of stormwater complaints last year and this year, and they’re spending more and more time and money investigating the complaints.

They point to changing weather patterns that dump a lot of rain in a short period of time as the main culprit, but say the city also has aging infrastructure that is beginning to fail in older parts of town.

There are limitations on what the city can do, and the majority of the problems appear to be on private property, city officials say. Some residents say they’re not trying to cast blame; they just want to get the problem fixed and don’t know what to do.

Tim Carroll, who lives on Creekview Drive in the Green Valley community, was among a host of residents who filled the City Council chambers in October after a severe flooding incident. He told the council his property had experienced “catastrophic flooding” five times in the previous 10 months.

Seven homes where he lives have been completely surrounded by water, and four of the driveways were completely submerged, he said. In October of last year, he had more than eight inches of dirty, muddy water in his basement, which is making him reassess whether this is the best place to raise his family.

David Bertanzetti, another resident on Creekview Drive, has been there 38 years, and he said the flooding problems haven’t always been there. More and more development has covered the area with pavement, which is contributing to the flooding.

“Nobody’s knocking progress. We need it, but something has got to be done,” Bertanzetti said. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to sit there and your house be an island where you absolutely cannot get to it or you’re surrounded by water. We’re not talking about just a lake. It is a roaring river with trees going down it. It’s absolutely frightening.”

Photos courtesy of City of Hoover.

Photos submitted to the city of Hoover show stormwater flooding a residential property on Napier Drive on separate occasions.

Lori Abbott, who lives in another part of Green Valley on Kestwick Drive, said her family chose their house because it had a basement where her mother could walk in and out without any stairs, and that is where she had been living. But in October, they had more than four feet of water in that part of the house in a short amount of time, she said.

Abbott said it’s a good thing she and her husband were home because her mother would have died.

“This has got to stop. My whole bottom level is gutted,” Abbott said. “My mother has been moved to assisted living, and she said to me, … ‘I never want to come back. I’m scared to death.’ This is not right. Something has to be done.”

Another couple on Kestwick Drive said their house flooded three times in six months, and they recently had seven feet of water in their home.

“This last time, we literally had to flee because our house shook when the doors busted in with the water coming in,” the wife said. “This was supposed to be our dream home. It is now ruining our finances.”

Richard Parker said years ago, the city would periodically clean excess silt and debris out of Patton Creek, but city officials now maintain they can’t do work on private property unless there is a “legitimate public purpose” for doing so. Thus, the silt has built up, and the creek is overflowing and eroding people’s yards, Parker said.

Flooding problems aren’t limited to Green Valley. Residents also have reported problems in Bluff Park, Loch Haven, Riverchase, Highland Crest, Paradise Acres, Pinewood and Trace Crossings.

Hoover City Engineer Chris Reeves said there seems to have been a change in weather patterns and the frequency of intense storms.

“The last couple of years have been nothing like we’ve seen before — just one after another,” Reeves said. “You don’t expect to have a 100-year storm six or seven times in a year, and that’s kind of what we’ve been experiencing. More intense storms is what we’re seeing — the amount of rainfall you get in such a short period of time.”

The storm that hit Hoover in early October dropped about 12 inches of rain in about three hours, Reeves said. “That’s a lot of water to try to handle,” he said, calling it more like a 2,500-year storm. “Hopefully we’ll never see that again.”

The Environmental Protection Agency in 2016 predicted that Alabama probably would experience more severe storms and drought than in the past because soils have become drier, annual rainfall has increased in most of the state and more rain arrives in heavy downpours.

Michael Garrison, a senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service, provided data that shows rainfall at the Birmingham International Airport has averaged 8.75 inches above normal for the past five years and rainfall at the Shelby County Airport has averaged 9.98 inches above normal.

While those counts don’t measure frequency, he would guess there would be more instances of heavy downpours mixed in with those kinds of averages, but a more detailed analysis would be necessary to verify that, he said.

Reeves noted the Hoover City Council in 2020 passed a new stormwater ordinance that requires stormwater detention and better protects the quality of stormwater runoff.

The city also has an outside consultant– Hydro Consultants– that reviews every stormwater plan submitted to the city, and Reeves and Assistant City Engineer Blake Miller said they feel confident in that company’s work.

Reeves said one problem is aging infrastructure. Many of the areas having problems are older communities built about 50 or more years ago, and the expected life of the corrugated metal stormwater pipes installed in that era is about 50 years, he said. Many of those pipes are starting to rust out and fail, causing erosion and sinkholes and making water go in directions it wasn’t designed to go.

But “every case is a little bit different,” Reeves said.

A key determination is whether the problem is on public property or private property, Reeves said. The city has received more than 550 stormwater flooding complaints since October, and each one was sent to the city attorney’s office for review to answer that question, he said.

If the problem is on public property, the city is taking steps to address those, but if it’s on private property, the city can’t take corrective action on private property unless such action is deemed by the City Council to have a “public interest,” he said.

“If it’s on private property, if the city has not accepted the infrastructure for maintenance, it’s that property owner’s responsibility to make sure that ditch is cleaned out or pipe is repaired,” Reeves said.

Thus far, only about 30 of those problems were deemed to be on public property; the rest were on private property, city officials said.

Since October, the city has allocated more than $2.5 million to remedy stormwater problems, most of which were on public property, but some of which were on private property but of “public interest” because of their impact on public property.

More recommendations for additional projects, with cost estimates, are expected to come to the City Council in June, City Administrator Allan Rice said. The projects will be prioritized by staff based on which ones will impact the most people, he said.

Kathi Thomas, a retired Trace Crossings resident, said she isn’t experiencing flooding problems herself but has spoken about the issue numerous times at council meetings because she is concerned about her neighbors in other parts of the city.

“A lot of these people are young families or older people retired and living on a fixed income,” she said. “It feels like they don’t have a voice and they don’t have anybody to help them.”

She knows the city can’t do certain things on private property, but state law allows cities to accept responsibility for stormwater systems and Hoover chooses not to accept that responsibility in most cases, she said.

To her, stormwater is best handled by the city because it requires so much coordination from one property to the next. If one person installs an 18-inch-wide stormwater pipe and the next property owner installs a 24-inch-wide pipe that feeds into the smaller pipe, that could cause a problem, she said.

The city has a responsibility to approve and inspect stormwater systems to make sure they work properly, and a lot of people are suffering harm and heartbreak, Thomas said.

“If the city can’t afford to fix a problem, how can six or seven homeowners afford to fix it?” she asked.

People are spending tens of thousands of dollars to try to fix issues to no avail or trying to sell their houses and move after being flooded every two months, she said. “People are getting divorced over this,” Thomas said. “It just hurts me.

“The City Council doesn’t seem to care,” she said. “This is a public health and public safety issue. The right thing is to say if we want to be a great city, we need to solve some of these problems.”

Hoover Council President John Lyda said the council’s role is to dedicate money to remedy problems based on recommendations from the mayor, who is relying on recommendations from the city’s engineering staff and consultants.

The council has acted expeditiously on every recommendation and will continue to do so as more are brought forward, he said. The city’s engineering staff has made a Herculean effort to evaluate and triage problems that have been reported, and the council hired outside engineers to help because of the volume of work, he said.

Rice said he knows stormwater problems can be costly to fix and people get emotional about it. Of the 550-plus people who reported stormwater damage, some got assistance from their insurance companies, and some got assistance from the federal government in the form of low-interest loans or grants, he said.

The city is addressing issues on public property, but the vast majority of the problems were on private property and need to be handled by those property owners, he said.

“People don’t want to hear that,” Rice said.  But “that is the unfortunate reality.”

Some communities in Hoover have homeowners associations that can coordinate and pay for remedies, but some — especially some older communities — don’t, he said.

He knows of at least one situation where neighbors along Patton Creek have banded together to raise money for flood remediation work, and he said “that’s probably the only solution in some of these instances — to combine resources and try to address issues among all affected property owners.”