Flood update coming Tuesday

Flooding.
It hit the entire county last summer and has become a word downtown Portland business owners dread.
A meeting scheduled for Tuesday is designed to provide information about where local officials are in the process of identifying ways to mitigate the problems caused during heavy rains.
Jay County Chamber of Commerce will host the Portland Storm Water Management Update at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Arts Place, 131 E. Walnut St., Portland.
“The thing that we’re really attempting to do is we’re wanting to bring the community together to hear the information on what’s been done, where are we heading with the flooding and resolving it and giving them good information,” said chamber executive director Dean Sanders. “Instead of them hearing it second-hand, we want them to hear from those that are most involved in the process.”
Flooding has been a hot topic locally since last summer, when 21.75 inches of rain fell in Portland from June 1 through mid-July. It was an amount a National Weather Service meteorologist referred to as “insane” and resulted in downtown Portland being flooded three times while area farmers suffered severe crop losses.
The average yearly rainfall for Jay County is 20.66 inches.
Portland Mayor Randy Geesaman, Jay County Commissioners president Faron Parr and a representative from engineering firm Butler, Fairman and Seufert will be the main speakers at Tuesday’s meeting in an effort to explain what has been done over the course of the last 10 months to try to find a solution to the flooding issues.
There will also be a short question-and-answer session.
Geesaman emphasized that the problem is complex.
“There’s two problems here — Millers Branch and the Salamonie River,” he said. “There has to be an answer on both ends.
“I want answers that will work.”
Millers Branch, a waterway that begins northeast of Portland and enters the city’s sewer system near Pearl Street, has caused problems by overloading sewer lines that then back up onto city streets. The Salamonie River was also over its banks multiple times last summer.
Geesaman plans to explain some of the issues the city is dealing with, and potential solutions that have been discussed. One of those involves replacing a current 18-inch sewer line with a 42-inch pipe in order to eliminate a bottleneck.
He will also present information from the Army Corps of Engineers about its timeline and process for potentially helping with the problem.
A representative from BF&S will also explain preliminary information on its study, though it is not yet complete. The commissioners hired the firm in early February to look at the flooding issue and help create a comprehensive drainage plan for the county.
Parr noted the importance of the commissioners being involved in the process, likening the county to a body with Portland as its heart and lungs.
“Where are we going to be financially as a county if we have our county seat’s downtown deteriorate and close up shop because of flooding?” he asked. “We were all working together. I think that’s what helped get the attention of the Army Corps of Engineers, that we were united as a group. I think that’s important.”
Portland Board of Works commissioned a study by Jones and Henry Engineers in 2014 and received the results in June. They showed that flood levels expected to occur once every two years are enough for Millers Branch to overwhelm the city’s sewer system.
The firm recommended constructing a bypass ditch beginning north of the parking area at Jay County Fairgrounds to redirect the Millers Branch water around the east side of Portland rather than continuing to have it enter the sewer system. The estimated cost was $2.14 million.
Another option to reroute the water with a box culvert along Pearl Street, Morton Street and Division Road came in with an estimated cost of $6.21 million, and digging a detention basin north of the city was estimated at $7.47 million.
Much of the attention locally has focused on the detention basin idea, with some fearing that rerouting Millers Branch east of the city could cause the Salamonie River. Brian Houghton of Jones and Henry said his company’s hydraulic models show that it would not be an issue because rerouting Millers Branch does not add more water to the river; it just takes the same water to the river on a different route.
Geesaman noted that the BF&S study will give local officials a second opinion and allow them to compare results to see if they match or have differing proposals.