Improved Roads, Jobs Coming to West Allis

Maybe we could hire some workers to fix our sewer system- that sounds like a good reinvestment to me! Come live in West Allis, our basements flood and sewers back up, but we have NEW ROADS!

"Jobs" coming to West Allis? Really? Correct me if I'm wrong, but construction jobs are transitory in nature, and generally go to the lowest-bid contractor without any regard of where those workers live. Is there some provision saying that a certain percentage of the 150 jobs for these road projects MUST come from West Allis? If not, then I think it's fair to say that the title Senator Sullivan used for this blog is just a tad bit misleading.

I wasn't directly affected by the floods last month, but I tend to agree with 20-SomethingWestAllisFamilyWoman about spending ARRA money to prevent ANOTHER repeat of the 2008 and 2009 floods in 2010. Remember maybe 10+ years ago when State Street was flooded in Wauwatosa? How's that area doing now? I haven't heard any recent reports of flooding in that area. Does anybody know specifically what was done in that area to deal with that flood that really messed up things back then?

Maybe Senator Sullivan could find a way to get it done in West Allis as well. Maybe not. It would certainly help him in the upcoming campaign against Leah Vukmir if he could get it done. It would mean even more if Senator Sullivan's name was the ONLY name associated with getting this done rather than have him piggyback his name to other people's work in the State Legislature.

I would be happy to see my neighbors in West Allis have their flooding problems fixed, but it seems to me that these are not problems that I - as someone who does not live in West Allis - should pay for. If state or federal infrastructure problems or policies are causing the problem, then I stand corrected and state and/or federal officials should solve them. If not, then it is a local issue that local officials must solve and local people must pay for.

Whatever happened to the "big" redoing of 60th Street from Lincoln Ave to the northern West Allis limits? 60th Street gets as much traffic if not more than the three targeted streets.

I agree with Padraig. The flooding appears to be a city problem in that the poster talked about failure of a pumping system installed by the city. State legislators, including Senator Sullivan, have no authority over city governments. We all pay taxes to our own local governments to fix those kinds of problems in our own communities.

Padraig,
Want to buy my house? Sometimes it's a swimming pool. It's easy to turn up your nose to your neighbors who are having problems. Think about the future. All of us in West Allis take a huge hit on our homes, they end up selling for cheap. Some could not sell at all and sit empty. Do you know what happens to failed neighborhoods? Take a drive East and you'll see. Do you want that the next town over? Then Tosa could be surrounded by crap from all angles. Who wants to buy your house, which is now situated in the bulleseye of a ghetto? I hope your basement never floods. But, if it does, you may come back and change your comment.

Checkmate, 20-SomethingWestAllisFamilyWoman...

I almost made the comment in my previous post that I wonder if Senator Sullivan was somehow trying to subconsiously have us dumb voters link his name with this Federal aid, even though he really had nothing to do with it. There is an election next year after all, and he may want to plant the seed in some 'not so savy' voters. The ARRA Federal dollars are going to areas throughout the country to repair failing infrastructure. No State goverments are involved at all.

Tosaoutsider wrote, "We all pay taxes to our own local governments to fix those kinds of problems in our own communities." That's a perfectly valid argument, but if you take that position, then you'll also have to concede that President Obama is wrong and should not be spending a dime for these types of infrastructure fixes in ANY city. The money isn't free. The money comes from the productive members of our society (i.e. the taxpayers).

The big problem as I understand it is that there has been no conclusive reason given as to the real CAUSE of why there has been flooding in same area for two years in a row. Finding the real cause of the flooding is the first step in really fixing it.

My comment about the State having nothing to do with the ARRA money was intended to be in the context of GENERATING money to actually do this work. The money came from (or will come from) our Federal tax dollars and will apply directly to President Obama's already massive Federal deficit. It does not directly add to any State's budget deficit.

My basement has flooded on a couple of occassions during heavy rainstorms - only once, though, to the point that I had to put a pump down there to get it out. I am actually a city of Milwaukee resident who lives a block or two away from Tosa. As such, I pay plenty in property taxes. I hope the flooding problems in West Allis are addressed, but - again - it's not my responsibility to help pay for the fixes unless state or federal policies or infrastructure problems are the root cause. Similarly, I don't expect the folks of West Allis to pay for Milwaukee's expensive problems (we have too many to list) even though you are our neighbors.

Wauwatosa'a Village area was flood prone about ten years ago. I don't know a lot about the project because I had just moved here when they were cleaning up after two years of bad flooding. This was eleven years ago.

Since then, 79 properties were purchased and demolished, the flood plain was lowered, berms were constructed to protect the Village, and work was done last summer by the MMSD - I think this involved connecting the Hart Park area with the Deep Tunnel, but I could be wrong about that. I believe there was federal FEMA money used for the project along with state (DNR) and city money.

Hart Park flooded last spring. I'm not sure about this spring. Basements are still flooding in Wauwatosa as they are elsewhere. I think that everybody is sympathetic with those who have had basement flooding, but this is a city problem and that's where homeowners have to look for relief.

People in Wauwatosa have our own problems with water, we're paying for those problems, and we can't be expected to pay for West Allis' problems unless there's a plan in place like the one we had. It sounds like West Allis installed pumps and they're not working. That's a city problem.

I believe ARRA money is supposed to be for shovel ready projects. It doesn't sound like West Allis has a plan in place at the moment.

Before one gets their daily exercise by jumping to conclusions, flooding is natural and man-made. Sewage backup is man-made. Sewage backup prevention is man-made. You get sewage backup in your house, get a brass one-way valve installed in the lateral. When my parents house was built in the 60's and not in this state, it was mandatory that each house had one of these installed next to the basement floor cleanout to help prevent this from happening. Enough said on sewage backup - easily solved. I would not write an insurance policy for flood insurance unless it was proven that a backflow preventer was installed.

Street flooding - that is a different issue altogether and not as easily solved as the basement issue. That is a function of terrain and man. I am only going to use the Metal Tech / Greenfield / 84th flooding here. The buried section of Honey Creek runs underneath Metal Tech on their east side. There is a manhole access point next to their building on the SE side that did not pop its top but blew out the side of the pipe and damaged the walkway as the water was flowing OUT. My guess is that there was way too much water getting into the Honey Creek pipes and the discharge at the freeway couldn't get it out fast enough. So IN >> OUT, you get water backing up - that is a given. Water backed up where convenient, and easy. It comes down to pure facts at this point - Honey Creek can't handle the flow that it was tasked with. Could be bad engineering, fate, or both. Methinks it is both.

Continuing on about Honey Creek. I walked the base of Honey Creek northwest of 84th back down to the exit of the underground system. Asides from the deterioration of the concrete in the section that I was in, I could see how high the water level has been at one time. This is easily done, look for the highest level of flotsam that is in the trees/bushes that are either in or alongside the creek. Honey Creek has been full up at least once based on where the garbage is. The outlet consists of 3 10' x 15' (guess) discharge pipes. If the volume coming in to the Honey Creek pipes than can leave by this outlet, water will back up waiting to get out. That is man-made and I will say, poor design and not compensating for what can really happen. 4.25 inches of rain in a bit over 2 hours is a lot of water and I can guarantee the system was not designed with this amount of demand in mind.

As Bill Cosby once opined - It can always get WORSE. But there are three options available: 1) Put up with it; 2) Clear the area where it floods and make it a park that is capable of absorbing flood waters; 3) Increase the flow capacity of the system.

I will leave it to others to decide what is best. My guess is that the engineers that designed this piping were negligent in figuring out overload scenarios or some people just ignored them anyways. Now it is back to haunt, two years in a row. What about next year?

Thank you, jadedeye. Very interesting.

I would be nothing less than thrilled if the city wanted to buy my house and demolish it. In fact, I think that this needs to happen in the neighborhood I live in, just west of Hwy 10. I have no doubt in my mind that, if the problems with water were taken care of once all the properties have been destroyed, businesses would love to move into that prime location! The city could collect way more taxes from businesses in that area than they could from citizens. Would I take fair market value for my home? No, especially seeing as West Allis decided that my new furnace and air conditioner have raised the value of my home! I was told at the city meeting that our neighborhood is in a "basin." I sure as heck would not have bought that house had I known that!! How about everyone else? Wouldn't you LOVE to see some great stores just west of HWY 100 near Lincoln?!?

I hope everybody is taking notes here and realizing what unintended side effects may result with Senator Sullivan's endorsement of removing all that green space near Froedert and replacing it with concrete for the new UWM school. Where's all that water that is currently being absorbed in that unofficial dog park by Froedert going to go once the dirt changes to concrete? It HAS to go somewhere. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The addition of the UWM site in Wauwatosa is a positive for the community.

Wouldn't the water just go into the retention ponds?

Just like the Deep Tunnel was supposed to prevent basements from being filled with backwashed sewage? Just like the Deep Tunnel was supposed to minimize the likelihood that MMSD would dump raw and semi-treated sewage into Lake Michigan?

All I'm saying is that people tend to take for granted the things they have today (green space) until they're lost. In a sense, that unofficial dog park could be considered a 'natural' retention pond, couldn't it? Once that's gone, it's gone along with the capacity of both that land AND the man-made retention ponds to the North of it to absorb as much rainwater as they're capable of handling today.

I am going to be breaking this one up into several posts so I don't get nailed by the word count limiter.

There are three types of ground for rain to fall onto: 1) Ground that can absorb water at some rate; 2) Hardpan ground that can't absorb water because of it being baked solid; 3) Water saturated ground that can't take any more.

I know that from watching my yard that night, it was saturated. My back yard is pretty flat and serviced by a french drain network for the gardens. I had ponding in my lawn because there was so much water that either the ground could not absorb any more or it was falling faster than what could be absorbed. Either way, that is now runoff and becomes a player in flooding. My green space became useless. There is only so much water that can be absorbed and when the rainfall rate is higher than the absorb rate, you get runoff. When green space is saturated, it becomes useless for flood control.

I live in the Honey Creek drainage basin in the section that is serviced by the underground piping installed many years ago.

Honey Creek flows north through West Allis to meet up with the Menominee River in 'tosa. The buried section starts out at the north side of McCarty Park on Arthur between 81st and 82nd. The piping consists of two 10 feet high by 15 feet wide underground pipes protected by a sloping garbage grate. The discharge of the underground piping is at 84th and the entrance to WB I-94. Here, the piping is 3 of 10' x 15' pipe. So the gain in piping is one 10' x 15' pipe.

Now to figure out the max volume of water that can be naturally put through that one section. What I am going to do is napkin engineering. I am not going to take in account elevation changes or pipe friction which will change the flow rates.

That one 10' x 15' section has to carry the influx of water from the area serviced by the buried section, and for the sake of this discussion, I will approximate that to be 3 square miles of saturated ground. If I was saturated, I am sure that everyone else was.

Now to the math.

3 square miles equates to 5280^2*3 = 83,635,200 square feet. One cubic foot of water has 7.48 gallons to it. Rainfall in my raingauge was 4.25 inches in 2.25 hours = 1.89 inches / hr or 0.158 ft/hr. So for one hour, assuming the measured area suffered the same rainfall rate that I did, the total hourly volume would be (5280^2*3)*0.158 = 13,214,361 cu. ft. * 7.48 = 98,843,425 gallons. Now we have a working volume of water to deal with. Now to figure out if that 10' x 15' piece of pipe can handle the load, that is assuming that the part of Honey Creek that is at McCarty park is full up.

I am going to treat the 10 x 15 pipe outlet as a rectangular weir. The flow through a rectangular weir can be approximated using the Francis formula: q=3.33 * (w - 0.2*h) * h^1.5, where: q = flow rate in cu.ft./sec; w = width of the opening in feet; h = head in feet. So w = 15 and h = 10. This give q = 1,369 cu.ft/sec or 4,928,400 cu.ft. / hr. The three pipes together could handle 14,785,200 cu.ft./hr.

You can't put 13 million cu.ft./hr of water through a pipe that can handle 5 million cu.ft/hr naturally. It just won't work unless you have assistance, either gravity or pumping. Since it won't work, water has to collect elsewhere and where it decides to collect are the low places, like in front of Metal Tech, Greenfield and 84th.

So, what is the max rainfall rate that could be handled? About 0.7" per hr, assuming McCarty Park is full up. That is not good.

I will admit right now that this is napkin work. The actual flow values would be less because of friction, turbulence, air entrainment, etc.

What is the solution? I presented options in a previous post but all the information is here to study. I may be wrong in my drainage area size but that was mentioned that before that I was wagging it. Regardless, it is time to start worrying if the rainfall rate exceeds 3/4" / hr around here.

Who is responsible for the fix? MMSD? City of West Allis? County of Milwaukee? State of Wisconsin? This will be interesting to see and I am sure that there will be more flooding events before there is any action and that is too bad and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

I think that any effort to address street flooding in West Allis would have to start with the city. They should certainly approach county, state, and federal agencies for assistance; but the effort should start with the city.

Basement flooding would have to start with the homeowners. My basement doesn't flood. If it did, I would call a plumber and pay him to help me find a solution. To me, that's one of the responsibilities of homeownership. It sounds like there is money available to homeowners whose basements flooded. If there's government money available to help, I would apply for it. That's what I would do.

It's my understanding that the section of Wauwatosa that was demolished was prone to street fllooding. I believe that the work that was done increases the capacity of the drainage system. The berms are expected to protect the businesses on State Street, but there won't be any new businesses going in where the homes once stood. It's going to be a park. Future flooding is anticipated and the plan is to locate permanent structures in spots where flooding is less likely. The parts where flooding is still a possibility will be hiking trails and picnic areas

OK, Tosa Outsider- my basement does NOT flood because I have a poor foundation. It floods because the SEWER BACKS UP into the basement. We get water up to our porches because it has no where to go. How is that our fault? Calling a plumber won't help and THERE IS NOT MONEY AVAILABLE TO US.

I agree that streets and highways are in need of repairs, but I disagree with the Feds paying for the projects. If Doyle would stop stealing money from the DOT to pay for votes from the teachers' union, we'd have much better roads. Mr. Sullivan, how much money has been taken from DOT in the last 10 years? I suspect it's approaching 2 BILLION dollars! Doyle and roads shouldn't be used in the same sentence.