A flood of frustration: Rockford residents say flooding fix is overdue

It was a moment Jay Larson had dreaded for years.

On Saturday, July 13, a heavy rain fell and Larson watched as his fellow Keith Creek Neighborhood residents scrambled to move their cars and belongings to high ground as floodwaters once again crept up their streets and surrounded their houses.

It was deja vu of the worst kind.

Larson had spent years working with the city through the Keith Creek Neighborhood Association after the 2006 and 2007 floods devastated the Rockford subdivision that he called home.

He said he eventually lost patience and grew "frustrated" with the slow pace of progress on city drainage improvements. And while Rockford has taken some steps — including buying out owners of flood-prone homes near Churchill Park and creating more greenspace and has a project underway on Charles Street to alleviate flooding there — it's not enough, the longtime resident said.

In 2018, after another heavy rain/flash flooding episode that miraculously spared his neighborhood, Larson penned an email to city officials telling them they had "dodged a bullet."

It was only a matter of time, Larson warned, before a heavy rain would prove too much for the existing drainage system and the damage become much more severe.

"That's the point of frustration, how long is this going to take," Larson said. "I kind of saw the writing on the wall. I knew it was eventually going to happen because they had not done anything major enough to mitigate it to where it wouldn't happen."

Problem areas across the city

Although the Keith Creek neighborhood has been the site of some of the most severe flooding in Rockford over the last 20 years, there are problem areas across the city.

Much of Rockford was built before city planners took storm water management into careful consideration, Interim Public Works Director Timothy Hinkens said.

The city is now having to reverse engineer fixes in areas that are prone to flooding during periods of heavy rain. The city has a master plan containing more than 30 storm water improvement projects costing an estimated $110 million.

Finding enough money is a challenge, Hinkens said.

And even when you can find the money and get the projects done, Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate.

The amount of rain that fell the night of July 13 and 14 — the intensity and duration of the downpour — could have taxed a newer and improved system, as well, Hinkens said.

A 200-year storm

The Keith Creek neighborhood near Churchill Park remains flood-prone, especially for homes in low-lying areas where water flows when it spills over the creek bank.

The overbuilt area around Charles and 20th street where Vietnam War veteran and grandfather Dean Gulbranson , 76, of Rockford, drowned the night of July 14 has long been a flood hazard .

So are places where roads travel beneath railroad crossings like those along Broadway and along 9th Street.

Rockford designs storm sewers to handle what they call a 10-year storm — meaning there is a 10% chance of there being a storm of that magnitude each year. Storm water detention ponds are designed to withstand a 100-year storm, or a storm that has a 1% chance of happening annually.

Then there's a 200-year storm. Those storms have a 0.5% chance of happening any given year. And for those storms, there is nowhere for the water to go.

"By all of our accounts, this was over a 200-year storm," Hinkens said. "Everything was overwhelmed. Every inlet, every storm sewer, every pond was over-topping. The creeks were rising above their banks. And it was just citywide flooding everywhere. Pretty much flooding was all across the city."

The city continues to work on solutions, Hinkens said. It wants to widen Keith Creek through the Churchill Park area and create enough capacity for a 50-year storm event.

It looked 'like a geyser'

Floodwaters were at least a foot deep inside Dan O'Connell's North Highland Avenue house Saturday and Sunday.

The water was over the bottom step of his basement stairs. His hot water heater was destroyed and air conditioning unit is likely a goner. He lost hundreds of dollars worth of carpentry supplies. And his basement will now need to be repainted.

"That was backing up like a geyser about a foot tall," O'Connell said of what he suspected was a clogged city storm water inlet. "It was spewing water like Old Faithful, just erupting out."

A car ended up in the front yard of Leslie Roxworthy's neighbor on North Gardiner Avenue near UW SwedishAmerican Hospital. At least three cars stalled on the street Sunday night.

With a lack of streetlights, drivers may have not been able to see how deep the water was and tried to drive down the road, Roxworthy said.

"It floods anytime we have a heavy downpour," she said. "I would estimate it's been about once a year, once a summer, since we moved here in 2000 ... We are sort of at the base of the hill. If you go north from my house up towards Jackson Street and the Spafford Estate, it's completely dry up there. Water just just accumulates here."

Jeff Kolkey writes about government, economic development and other issues for the Rockford Register Star. He can be reached at  (815) 987-1374, via email at jkolkey@rrstar.com and on X @jeffkolkey .

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: A flood of frustration: Rockford residents say flooding fix is overdue