Drainage efforts are a positive step

It’s not very often that you find yourself in a place where you might be able to solve a problem that goes back decades.

But that’s where Jay County and the City of Portland find themselves today.

The deal is not done. The last T’s have not been crossed, and the last I’s have not been dotted.

But a solution is in the works.

Imagine for a moment that you are driving north from Portland after a period of seriously heavy rain. You go past road 100 North. You go past Oakwood Mobile Home Community. And you get to that place where there’s a little curve in U.S. 27.

If it’s been raining hard enough or there has been enough snow melt, you can guarantee that if you look to the east you’ll find a significant pond — or maybe a small lake — in the farm field on your right.

Trouble is, that pond/small lake also plays a role in flooding Oakwood. And some of that floodwater adds to the downstream pressure to the Salamonie River that results in high water in downtown Portland.

The remedy has been a long time coming, and it won’t solve everything. But it makes sense.

County surveyor Brad Daniels, working with city government and the county drainage board and the Indiana Department of Transportation and adjoining property owners, appears to have put together something that will move the storm water elsewhere.

If all goes well and if all the private and public funding participation can be nailed down, an inadequate drain underneath U.S. 27 will be replaced with one significantly larger.

That will allow the temporary pond/lake on the east side of U.S. 27 to drain westward to the Wehrly Ditch and then onward to the Salamonie River.

Those waters won’t flood Oakwood, and they won’t go through downtown Portland. They’ll enter the Salamonie downstream, west of the city.

Will it be a permanent solution?

Maybe. Maybe not.

It could turn out that the tube under the highway needs to be even larger to handle even more runoff. It could be that future development will change the drainage profile entirely. But it could also turn out that this is just what the doctor ordered.

At any rate, a decades-old headache will have been