Several residents of Bloomington’s west side and the Eastgate neighborhood spoke during public comment at Monday’s city council meeting, urging the council to put money toward improved sewers. The complaints come a little over a month after flooding that City Manager Tim Gleason has called a “once in 500-year event.”
Former Bloomington City Council Ward 7 candidate Coretta (C.J.) Jackson was among the commenters. Jackson, a 19-year resident of the west wide, said her home on West Monroe Street had over 3.5 feet of sewage water in the basement. She explained that in the 21 days after the flooding, she and her neighbors had to dodge “feces-soaked trash in the streets.”
“Classism reigns supreme in the public works department,” Jackson said. “The biggest number in all of this is zero — the number of responses or visits we have gotten from our mayor on West Monroe.”
"Just eliminating combined sewers by separating them doesn’t necessarily fix all the flooding problems."Kevin Kothe, Bloomington Public Works
Also speaking was Mark Welch, a longtime resident of the city’s west side.
“I’m used to being treated in a second class manner ... No one has been there to check out or investigate anything. All we have been told is, ‘You are on your own, we can’t help you, God did this.' Don't put that on God. You need to fix the problem and help us out,” he told the council.
Other comments came from residents of the city’s Eastgate neighborhood, which also faced substantial flooding in the June event. Eastgate is generally west of Regency Drive between Washington Street and Oakland Avenue.
Kathy Petty, one of these residents, handed a petition with over 75 signatures to Jeff Crabill who represents the area.
“This (sewer) problem affects the whole city of Bloomington,” Petty said. The petition asks that the council “minimize basement flooding by using funds awarded to the City of Bloomington under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to accelerate remediation of the Locust Colton Combined Overflow project that began in 2014.”
Monday's public commenters described their anxieties surrounding storms following the flooding and questioned whether it is worth investing to fix their homes if the city has not fixed the sewers.
“You need to ask yourselves if you want to keep kicking the can like those before you or if you want to do something,” one resident told the council.
In a short comment to the council, Eastgate resident Winnie Gent described her heartbreak at having lost all of her late husband’s belongings in the flood.
Residents said they'll continue to circulate the petition and pressure the council to do something to stop another flooding event with sewage backup from happening.
Costly problem
The city has around 85 miles of combined sewers concentrated within its older neighborhoods and, according to Director of Public Works Kevin Kothe, many Midwestern and Northeastern communities still have them, including 100 in the state of Illinois.
At Monday’s meeting, Kothe gave the third in a series of presentations related to the storms and the city’s under-the-street infrastructure.
The largest sewer-separation project now underway is the nine-phase Locust-Colton project, in the neighborhood just south of Bloomington Country Club. There are six phases remaining (totaling an estimated $25.6 million), and they’re on pace to finish by 2030.
Kothe said the city could shave nine months off the completion time for each remaining phase, and even merge some phases, and wrap it up by 2026. But to do that the city would likely have to forgo the low-interest borrowing from the Illinois EPA that has largely funded the Locust-Colton project until now. Instead, some other type of funding — such as local money — would be necessary.
Locust-Colton is hardly the only section of Bloomington with combined sewers. Indeed, there are 85 miles. Council member Mollie Ward of Ward 7 (Bloomington's west side) asked Kothe whether there was a plan to begin addressing combined sewers that do not have the overflow issue that attracts scrutiny from environmental regulators.
“There is no set schedule for separating the remaining combined sewers, or even necessarily how to address them,” Kothe replied. “Just eliminating combined sewers by separating them doesn’t necessarily fix all the flooding problems.”
The council will revisit infrastructure prioritization during the next nonvoting Committee of the Whole meeting on Aug. 16.
Vote on using reserves
Immediately following public comment, Crabill removed an item from the consent agenda that would grant the finance department $3.1 million from reserve funds to pay for equipment leases. Crabill questioned whether these funds could potentially be better used elsewhere considering the residents’ comments.
City Manager Gleason said there would be no cost to tabling the topic and making a decision later, a plan that Ward heavily supported.
“We’ve been hearing for weeks and weeks that we will get more answers in August, and I would like to see what those answers are before we spend millions from the reserves ... If we can wait for weeks for answers on the flood then let us wait until September to make a decision on this ... We haven’t followed through on our commitments to do right by people. I am saying not now (to this vote) out of respect for what we have been hearing for weeks now,” Ward said.
Council member Donna Boelen of Ward 2 voiced her support for the proposal and moved to vote on it as is.
“It doesn’t mean we don’t value that approach. It means we are willing to table making a decision to spend that money in that way until we have more information,” council member Julie Emig of Ward 4 said in response.
Despite pushback from Crabill, Emig and Ward, the council voted on the proposal which passed at a margin of 5-3.
The vote, however, was followed by groans of frustration from members of the audience, many of whom got up to leave.
