Talladega City Council OKs drainage project

The Talladega City Council unanimously passed four resolutions during a meeting Monday night at City Hall, but one in particular garnered the most attention during a public hearing held before the council meeting.

Resolution 2848 approved a $20,300 contract with the East Alabama Regional Planning and Development Commission for administration of the Community Development Block Grant for the Frazier Farms Drainage Project

Lance Armbrester and Chuck Chitwood of CDG Engineers discussed the details of the project designed to improve the water flow and drainage in two basins located between and around Frazier Street and Battle Street to the north and south and Rosa Street and Long Street from west to east.

All the runoff from this area comes from lawns, driveways and roadside ditches, Chitwood said. The first thing we had to do to figure out what was going on was to make site visits.

The first site the engineers researched was the Southwest Basin, an area between Rosa Street and Elbert Davis Street.

We have a significant amount of excavation work to be done in that area in order to accommodate the storm water, Armbrester said. All storm water in this area has been documented to be very severe to the point where there are several homes that are expected to be flooded several times each year.

The team then took time to study the North Basin, an area twice the size of the Southwest Basin and surrounding the smaller basin on the western, northern and eastern edges.

We have some significant design work to do in this area, Chitwood said.

Council President Horace Patterson proclaimed the drainage woes had been an issue for the city for close to 20 years.

I started to use the word disaster, but I think maybe the best word would be embarrassment that people have to live in that kind of situation for that long, Patterson said. Im trying to figure out how much benefit were going to get from this project as it relates to the issue.

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Talladega City Council OKs drainage project