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Photo courtesy of Josh Reidinger.
Stormwater floods Kenilworth Drive in May 2021.
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Photos courtesy of Brandon Broadhead, Homewood Fire Department.
Residents of The Crescent at Lakeshore Apartments are evacuated via boat.
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Photos courtesy of Brandon Broadhead, Homewood Fire Department.
Cars are seen in the flooded parking lot of The Crescent at Lakeshore Apartments after heavy rainfall and flooding May 4, 2021.
As the city of Homewood continues to evolve, stormwater issues have become increasingly challenging, city officials say.
“Part of the issue is we’ve got older homes that are being taken down, and larger homes are being put in their place, and very little yards are available because of the lot sizes,” Councilman Walter Jones said. “All of those factors kind of lead into additional stormwater when you don’t have permeable surfaces. You have nothing but concrete, and you’ve got asphalt that’s just handling the rainwater.
“It has created issues,” Jones said. “We’ve done some things that have helped, but it’s a tough situation to conquer.”
Homewood is not alone.
“Birmingham struggles; Vestavia Hills struggles; Mountain Brook struggles,” Homewood City Engineer Cale Smith said. “We all do the best we can to stay on top of maintenance and then infrastructure projects that help flooding.”
Addressing stormwater is part of the fiscal 2024 budget that Mayor Patrick McClusky submitted to the City Council recently. Smith said the city has a small amount of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding left for stormwater projects.
According to the city’s Finance Department, Homewood received a two-year allotment of $6.4 million in ARPA funding. Its remaining balance on hand is $1.35 million.
“Once that money is gone, then we’ll have to use capital money, local money on stormwater projects,” Smith said.
McCluskey’s budget didn’t list specific projects because the city hasn’t determined exactly which ones it’s able to do based on funding.
“We have a couple of grants out there for stormwater projects. If we get those, then we’ll do those, and that’ll be free money,” Smith said. “But if we don’t get the grants, then we might have to spend our own money.”
Homewood recently received the stormwater master plan it commissioned from the Kimley-Horn consulting firm. That report identified the city’s flooding problems and potential solutions to those problems.
Kimley-Horn collected data about drainage issues via an online platform from January to April 2022 and a public meeting on Feb. 15, 2022.
The consultants learned of public concerns about property flooding, street flooding, erosion, clogged inlets, damaged drains, inlet flooding and sinkholes. Historical data from public records was also considered.
The consultant cited eight geographic areas for addressing stormwater issues. Those are Kenilworth Drive and Ridge Road, Primrose (Melrose Place), the Edgewood Elementary School area, Bellview Circle, Glenwood Drive, the Overton Park area, the Homewood Middle School area and Oxmoor Road.
Kimley-Horn estimated the cost of improvement projects in these areas and to what extent the projects would resolve existing stormwater issues.
“It also took into consideration [that] if we do one stormwater project, how many properties does that help?” Smith said. “If we do a stormwater project and it only affects one property, and we can do the same cost project that affects five properties, have positive impact [on five properties], we would do the one that affects five properties.”
Seven improvement projects were recommended:
- Overton Park area: Install larger box culverts to convey flow downstream to Griffin Brook. Cost: $3,636,724.
- Homewood Middle School area: Install a detention facility on Valley Avenue. Cost: $3,534,174.
- Glenwood Drive: Install a closed drainage system to bypass flow through Glenwood Alley. Cost: $1,040,048.
- Melrose Place: Install a closed drainage system and install a diversion pipe on Primrose. Cost: $581,776.
- Edgewood Elementary School area: Upgrade inlets and pipes down to Griffin Brook. Cost: $490,015.
- Bellview Circle: Install a closed drainage system to the bypass flow along Bellview Circle and Somerset Drive. Cost: $263,287.
- Kenilworth Drive and Ridge Road: Replace a blocked pipe and install a closed drainage system at Hillwood Drive and Edgewood Boulevard. Cost: $243,015.
Smith said the Oxmoor Road area was not recommended as a repair project because any “fix” would create worse conditions downstream.
“In other words,” he said, “if we upsize pipes on the west side of Green Springs/Oxmoor, we would get more water faster in the areas between Green Springs and Griffin Brook Creek.”
Smith added that the area studied was only for the Griffin Brook Creek drainage basin, which runs approximately between Valley Avenue to the north, Green Springs to the west, and U.S. 31 to the east.
“That area drains to Shades Creek on the southeast side of Lakeshore and Green Springs intersection,” Smith said.
The Kimley-Horn report also included 13 recommended city ordinance revisions. Those proposed revisions include:
- Downstream analysis requirements for all proposed development that increases impervious surface area (sidewalks, parking lots, buildings) by more than 10%
- Requiring developers to meet with the city during plan development to discuss stormwater management on site, prior to the submission of plans for approval
- Assessing the impact of proposed development downstream at places where stormwater conveyance becomes constrained (for example, where a 10-foot-wide channel enters a 5-foot diameter pipe).
- Requiring proposed development to reduce the levels of water flow leaving the site
- Creating policies for determining if proposed development cannot be reasonably expected to meet select stormwater management standards
“The infrastructure that’s in the ground now is about 100 years old,” Smith said. “Of course, Homewood doesn’t look the same as it did 100 years ago, with larger rooftops and larger driveways and bigger commercial developments with asphalt paving, things like that. Our stormwater infrastructure can’t accommodate the new development that’s happened, especially in the past 10 years.
“That, along with environmental changes that we’ve seen in the past five years, really put a burden on infrastructure.”
The infrastructure that’s in the ground now is about 100 years old. Of course, Homewood doesn’t look the same as it did 100 years ago, with larger rooftops and larger driveways and bigger commercial developments with asphalt paving, things like that. Our stormwater infrastructure can’t accommodate the new development that’s happened, especially in the past 10 years.
Homewood City Engineer Cale Smith
To address those changes, Homewood passed an ordinance a year ago that said if a construction project increases the amount of impervious area on its site at all, the project cannot proceed unless an engineer looks at the site and writes a letter indicating the project is not creating adverse effects on downstream infrastructure and neighbors.
“What we’ve seen in the past year is a lot of detention facilities going in on residential and commercial development,” Smith said.
Jones said he doesn’t feel the city is paddling upstream, so to speak, because Homewood has taken action and knows it must continue to do what it can do.
“I feel like we’re just going to have to keep working on it,” the councilman said. “I looked at the numbers [in the Kimley-Horn report], and I said there’s no way in the world that we can do all these. But we can chip away at them and not be overwhelmed.
“We just can’t ignore them,” Jones said. “We have to develop the priority plans for all of those projects.”
