The city of Lexington has spent almost $20 million dollars on stormwater improvement projects over the last ten years. Water Quality Division Director Charlie Martin told Council members this week the city has satisfied the supplemental environmental agreement as part of the federal consent decree.
So, Martin said the local government can proceed at its own pace, but there’s still a lot of work to do.
Martin noted filling vacancies in engineering is difficult because it’s a very competitive marketplace. The water quality administrator told committee members it’s easier to plan for three $5 million projects than ten half million dollar projects, which are more timing consuming. Martin said older neighborhoods will continue to face challenges when heavy rains fall. “It seems like it rains harder and longer than it did when I was a kid. So, if our current design storm is five inches in a 24 hour period, and we’re getting those things over and over and over again, then yeah, that’s going to be stressing the infrastructure in those older neighborhoods because they just never were built to handle that to begin with,” said Martin.
Martin said no mitigation measures can address the heavy rains of 16 to 17 inches in a day which caused torrential flooding and loss of life in Middle Tennessee last weekend.
