This editorial commentary by Jefferson Weaver was featured on the Columbus Connection on Aug. 10. You can “Catch the Connection” on Spotify, Coolbeach1053.com, and WTXY 103.9 FM. Dissenting opinions and comments are always welcome.
You always hear folks say somebody ought to do something. Well, Greg Hewitt and Doug Smith decided to be somebody last week. Frustrated at his Nautilus gym on Frazier Street flooding every time Soules Swamp rises, Hewitt contacted a licensed explosives expert and with the aid of Smith and several others, blew a major chunk out of the large beaver dam blocking Soules Swamp behind Peacock’s Funeral Home in Whiteville. The city has hit the dam before, tearing out large portions with a trackhoe, but beavers always rebuild.
Facing fewer redtape tangles than local government, Hewitt contacted nearby landowners and with permission, set off an explosion heard throughout downtown. The state flood monitor on the Madison Street bridge showed a drop of between one and two feet in less than an hour.
The dambusters have been criticized for taking the bull by the horns for what is at best a temporary fix, but it’s likely they made a big difference to some business owners downtown. Talbot and Frazier Streets – ironically, including Hewitt’s gym – did indeed flood again, but by opening the channel, at least some of Debby’s floodwaters flowed on downstream.
While a few folks were criticizing Hewitt, others were criticizing the city for not doing enough. It’s a fact of life that Whiteville is going to flood. Parts of downtown were constructed on what was the city dump. Dirt was just packed on top of everything from tin cans and broken sewing machines to pieces of asphalt roads and concrete, then declared to be dry ground. That was before many of us were born, back when many of the streets were dirt and there was more open ground than solid surface for water to soak into after a big storm.
As a wise man put it, the city is paying for the mistakes of our forefathers.
At the same time, however, the city government is not sitting on their backsides.
Those who are ragging on the city for not doing enough need to do some research. There are bureaucratic hoops that must be jumped through before a single ditch can be dug by local government. It costs tax money to jump through those hoops, and the best way to save the taxpayer’s hardearned dollar is by obtaining grants from the state and federal governments.
Those grants always require studies, which in turn cost more money. Imagine what it would be like if the property tax bills next year included your portion of a $25 million bill to fix all the drainage at one time. There might not be any flooding, but there would be no businesses or residents to benefit, either.
While drainage problems may have been treated with bandaids for decades, City Manager Darren Currie and the city council and staff have been doing fullbore emergency surgery on stormwater problems for years. Since Hurriane Matthew the city has obtained $6.6 million in grants and local funding for stormwater improvement.
It’s a complex, expensive, frustrating process. As advocates of downtown as well as a proud downtown business, we at CCN know the heartache and anger that comes when six inches or more of the Soules Swamp flows through your office, and you have to stop work to clean up the mess. Indeed, right now much at the CCN office is on cement blocks or packed up and placed high since we were expecting Debby to barge through the door like an uninvited in-law.
Hewitt, Smith and other stepped up and did us a favor this week. They were able to jump in and get something done when the government was hogtied by laws and funding. Citizens can and should step up and be that somebody when there’s a need.
But for every exploding beaver dam that makes the news, there’s a dozen hardworking city staffers with shovels, heavy equipment and yes, grant applications, who are trying to get something done, too.
What can you do? It’s good you asked.
Clean out ditches on your property. Keep leaves and limbs out of the gutters and drains. If you’re building a parking lot or even a driveway, consider one of the many options available to avoid installing impervious surfaces like asphalt and concrete.
There’s an old joke about the three rules of plumbing: hot goes on the left, cold goes on the right, and everything else, shall we say, only drains downhill.
Those drains only work when we all step up and decide to be somebody.
