CITY COUNCIL PREVIEW-SEPTEMBER 13, 2021
BLOOMINGTON, IL - Improving drainage for hundreds of residents outside of the Locust Colton CSO elimination project, as well as expediting processes in both areas are all part of a recommendation up for discussion by the Bloomington City Council tonight.
The recommendation will also provide more than six times the dollar amount currently budgeted for a long-standing city program that can help alleviate residential sewer backups with action items expected to begin as early as September 27th if the recommendation is supported.
The city has held a series of public conversations over the last several months to look into community infrastructure as follow up to the record rains of June 25-26 and resulting historic flooding throughout the community. While the focus has largely, and understandably been on the flooding, the issues of infrastructure, drainage, prioritizing improvements and identifying funding to pay for them are interrelated, complex and required a deeper consideration and collection of input to arrive at recommendations that would be equitable for the entire community.
Based on those conversations and what the city heard from the public and city council, staff will be recommending the following:
- An accelerated Locust Colton CSO Elimination project – This would combine phases 4 and 5 of the 9-phased project, reducing the timeline for those two phases by two years and for the entire project by three years.
- Hydraulic modeling and a new central city detention basin – Fine tuning the hydraulic model, development of construction plans and beginning construction of a new detention basin near the center of the city and pursuing a 2nd identified site will have the greatest impact on reducing flooding during heavy rain events even though the Locust Colton project has gotten much of our recent attention.
- Increased funding for new, more flexible Overhead Sewer program.
- Approval of an Expediting Ordinance to move projects faster – Understanding the urgency of the work, this would allow faster approvals under certain limited circumstances.
“While a number of these projects have been in motion and under construction in some cases, we clearly heard from council a desire to do something to move things faster,” said City Manager Tim Gleason. “We also have to be conscious of balancing our next steps with projects that will impact the most people in our community and don’t overextend resources so that other important projects are threatened.”
During tonight’s presentation, staff will also provide an update on the various options for public assistance that were, and in some cases are still, available to residents. Thousands of volunteer hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars were expended or committed to help residents in the months following the rains by residents and local, state, and federal agencies to help during the community’s time of need.
Contact: Katherine Murphy
Communications & External Affairs Mgr.
Phone: 309-434-2241
email: kmurphy@cityblm.org
