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Our neighbors lost their footbridge in a violent storm June 17. They made the mistake of asking the local government to help them put it back and remove a large clog of loose rock from a failed Corps of Engineers bank stabilization project. The rock is so deep that it all but fills the creek, meaning that all of our yards and the heavily traveled main road flood with less than an inch of rain (which is a very common amount in eastern Ohio.) Tomorrow night at 6 PM, Senator Sherrod Brown's office will send a representative to the township hall to discuss making them all sell out, even though their houses are far above any reasonable flood plain. One of the affected houses is pre-CW, the other either wartime or immediately postwar, in excellent repair (one recently renovated, with a government loan, no less!) None of us wants to sell out. Worse yet, forcing these people, and perhaps us, out of the homes our families have lived in for many generations won't alleviate the road flooding that endangers motorists.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
1.:Call Senator Sherrod Brown's office as soon as possible at (202)-224-2315 and tell him that these families want a bridge, not a buyout. We want his phone to ring off the hook in the morning. There's also a contact form at http://brown.senate.gov/contact/
2: Send e-mails of support for Linda and Tim Barrett, Bernard and Shirley Tollett, Marsha Buterbaugh and Marcella Brown to my e-mail at RMSMorgan@yahoo.com, or send snail mail to any of the above, general delivery, Jacobsburg, Ohio 43933. (I don't feel comfortable giving street addresses, for obvious reasons, but they know I'm looking for help.) You may also comment on my blog at http://www.offtherailsandonthenet.blogspot.com
3.: If you have any connection to national news outlets, please forward this story to them. The longer version follows.
Thanks for anything you can do for us...
Becky Morgan
RMSMorgan@yahoo.com
Our neighbors have houses far above any known flood plain, even that of the record intensity 5.5" of rain that fell in 15 minutes in 1990 and the over 7" of rain that fell within four or five hours in the wake of Hurricane Ivan. After the 1990 flash flood that killed twelve of our neighbors (some of whom lived in very old houses!), the Corps of Engineers lined the creek banks with small, loose rock in numerous places. It began to fall into the creek bed, but between 1990 and 2004, no damage occurred even during the usual heavy rains.
Hurricane Ivan stripped the rock from the banks and piled it in the stream bed in three or four spots along the seven-mile creek. With the creek bed completely full of rock, the water has nowhere to go but out. Think of it as pouring a cup of coffee. If your cup is empty, as is normal, you have no problem. If your co-worker has filled it with aquarium gravel, the coffee will spill out onto the surface around it. Because the stream is shallow, normal amounts of rain now cause the road and surrounding yards to flood.
On June 17, a typical severe summer storm dropped 1.73" of rain on the upper reaches of our watershed in less than half an hour. The flood wave, as it moved downstream, picked up several large trees that were lying in the stream's old bed. The trees broke a chunk out of the road in one spot, caused further debris damming in others, and eventually crashed into our neighbors'elevated footbridge, tearing it out.
At 6 PM tomorrow, Senator Sherrod Brown's office is sending a representative to our township trustees' meeting to threaten the families with a buyout. That's right, folks--people with undamaged homes in a safe area may be forced out because the government has decided not to clean up its mess.
The amount of money the government has tried to spend to entice one family to move back into the flood plain in New Orleans would clean this creek so that four families wouldn't be forced off the property they've lived on for anywhere from thirty to sixty years--property that was first settled in 1793, along a road so old that Congress paid for it under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
So far no one has suggested forcing us out of our home, but I'm not naive enough to think it won't happen as the creek silts further and the road floods more often. Belmont County, Ohio is losing population rapidly and there is regular hand-wringing about what we can do to keep people here. Meanwhile, the township, county, and US governments appear to want to force four families out of
their homes.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
1.:Call Senator Sherrod Brown's office as soon as possible at (202)-224-2315 and tell him that these families want a bridge, not a buyout. We want his phone to ring off the hook in the morning. There's also a contact form at http://brown.senate.gov/contact/
2: Send e-mails of support for Linda and Tim Barrett, Bernard and Shirley Tollett, Marsha Buterbaugh and Marcella Brown to my e-mail at RMSMorgan@yahoo.com, or send snail mail to any of the above, general delivery, Jacobsburg, Ohio 43933. (I don't feel comfortable giving street addresses, for obvious reasons, but they know I'm looking for help.) You may also comment on my blog at http://www.offtherailsandonthenet.blogspot.com
3.: If you have any connection to national news outlets, please forward this story to them. The longer version follows.
Thanks for anything you can do for us...
Becky Morgan
RMSMorgan@yahoo.com
Our neighbors have houses far above any known flood plain, even that of the record intensity 5.5" of rain that fell in 15 minutes in 1990 and the over 7" of rain that fell within four or five hours in the wake of Hurricane Ivan. After the 1990 flash flood that killed twelve of our neighbors (some of whom lived in very old houses!), the Corps of Engineers lined the creek banks with small, loose rock in numerous places. It began to fall into the creek bed, but between 1990 and 2004, no damage occurred even during the usual heavy rains.
Hurricane Ivan stripped the rock from the banks and piled it in the stream bed in three or four spots along the seven-mile creek. With the creek bed completely full of rock, the water has nowhere to go but out. Think of it as pouring a cup of coffee. If your cup is empty, as is normal, you have no problem. If your co-worker has filled it with aquarium gravel, the coffee will spill out onto the surface around it. Because the stream is shallow, normal amounts of rain now cause the road and surrounding yards to flood.
On June 17, a typical severe summer storm dropped 1.73" of rain on the upper reaches of our watershed in less than half an hour. The flood wave, as it moved downstream, picked up several large trees that were lying in the stream's old bed. The trees broke a chunk out of the road in one spot, caused further debris damming in others, and eventually crashed into our neighbors'elevated footbridge, tearing it out.
At 6 PM tomorrow, Senator Sherrod Brown's office is sending a representative to our township trustees' meeting to threaten the families with a buyout. That's right, folks--people with undamaged homes in a safe area may be forced out because the government has decided not to clean up its mess.
The amount of money the government has tried to spend to entice one family to move back into the flood plain in New Orleans would clean this creek so that four families wouldn't be forced off the property they've lived on for anywhere from thirty to sixty years--property that was first settled in 1793, along a road so old that Congress paid for it under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
So far no one has suggested forcing us out of our home, but I'm not naive enough to think it won't happen as the creek silts further and the road floods more often. Belmont County, Ohio is losing population rapidly and there is regular hand-wringing about what we can do to keep people here. Meanwhile, the township, county, and US governments appear to want to force four families out of
their homes.
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