Phenix City Officials To Hold Meeting To Discuss Flooding at 3 p.m. on April 14

By Kirsten J. Barnes

Crowell Park in Phenix City has a history of flooding. The neighborhood sits in a flood plain and city officials say homes should never have been built there.

The end of March and the beginning of April saw significant storms, which caused severe flooding on Lockhart Circle and Jackson Drive.

“My grandmother bought this house in 1973. I’ve been here all my life,” said Terri Gooch Neely, who will turn 52 later this year, referring to her grandmother, Dorothy Gorden. “This past week was the worst, and this has been an issue for 40 years. I know this is a flood zone.”

The neighborhood is in a low valley.

“My den floods because the rain from the hill coming from Edmonds Estates comes into our neighborhood,” Neely said. “You can never go in my backyard without it being muddy no matter how hot it is.”

Phenix City Mayor Eddie N. Lowe and City Manager Wallace Hunter invite the public to attend the upcoming council work session at 3 p.m. on Monday, April 14 in the City Council Chambers, located inside the Public Safety Building at 1111 Broad St., Phenix City, Ala. 36867, to discuss this ongoing issue.

“We understand the issue and when I say we, I mean myself, the city manager and the council,” Lowe said. “We will address that on Monday.”

Lowe and Hunter said that because this is an election year, people are trying to make this decades-old issue a hot topic.

“There are too many inuendoes and lies out there. They are trying to set the stage, but what people are currently saying is simply not true,” Lowe said. “On Monday we will have the full-blown details related to everything we have done in that area. We will discuss all of the things that have been done.”

Neely was hopeful that a public meeting would have been held at a different time when more people could attend.

“A lot of us are working and no one can really take off work to go to a meeting in the middle of the day,” Neely said. “I can’t afford to take off.”

Neely said April 6, she had water above her ankles in her den, and some of her neighbors had nearly a foot of water throughout every room in their house.

Because the houses are located in a food zone, residents do not qualify for flood insurance and FEMA will not assist them, because the agency came years ago and offered to purchase the homes. At the time, only five people agreed to sell.

“This last flood, it messed up a lot of people’s houses,” said Neely, who said some of her neighbors have been unable to get back into their homes because of the water.

She said her home did not get more flooding, because her son dug a four-foot trench in her backyard to alleviate some of the water.

“There was an F1 tornado in Columbus that killed two people last week. We’ve dredged down there in 2009 with the core of engineers and that helped some, but it not going to handle a severe storm,” said Hunter about the ongoing problem. “When the Chattahoochee swells the water runs through our city and the lower-level areas are going to be hurt just like Lake Bottom.”

Hunter said the city already has spent money on a watershed study to find out what can be done, but the only real solution is for those people to move and sell their homes.

“The developer should have never built those houses next to that creek,” Hunter said.

People on Facebook are saying they were promised that the flooding would be fixed.

“There has never been a time when I’ve told anybody that we could fix it,” Hunter said.

Lowe echoed that sentiment.

“It’s a flood plain and it’s going to always happen,” Lowe said. “There are some things that have taken place, but there have never been any promises that were broken.”

Regardless, the people who live there believe they have no options. The dirty water smells and is a safety hazard.

“We don’t know what’s in that water,” said Neely, adding that she hasn’t had carpet in her home for nearly seven years and that she constantly has to spray Chlorox to stop mold from forming.  “It’s just awful. It’s sad. We just have to constantly pray that it doesn’t rain hard.”

She said City Councilman Arthur Day Jr. did come to the neighborhood to assess the damage, but only after she posted something on Facebook.

“We encourage people to come to the meeting,” Lowe said.