There’s a lot of water in Richard.
Not a big surprise, really. The tiny, incorporated area just beyond Sabraton on Earl L Core Road (W.Va. 7) sits in a floodplain.
Except the water is always there.
Rain, no rain — it doesn’t really matter. There it is, pooling in places it’s not supposed to be, like basements, driveways and backyards.
Exactly what, or who, is causing the problems and exactly what can, or should, be done about it depends largely on who you ask.
When it comes to the water in Richard, there’s also a lot of disagreement.
Chad Matheny, who operates Core Metal Roofing & Supply as well as two neighboring rental houses in the area, has been appealing to the Monongalia County Commission recently to try to get some answers.
Matheny said he’s been dealing with “extreme flooding” on his rental properties for the last two years or so.
He applied for, and received, a permit to raise the elevation of the properties, but that permit was later pulled over concerns the fix would simply shift the water down the street.
That concern was expressed by neighbors who said some of this problem originated when the current Core Metal Roofing property was similarly built up out of the flood plain. Matheny explained that was done prior to his involvement with the property, though he did clear and raise an adjoining parcel to be the business’s parking lot.
So, Matheny went back to the county and received permission to dig a hole in order to explore what lies beneath his flooded yards. He found a decades-old, broken down terracotta storm drain.
“This took excessive pumping. I have a three-inch trash pump that pumps over 200 gallons a minute. It pumped for approximately six hours to get caught up with the incoming water. If it runs out of gas for five minutes, it takes 30 or 40 minutes to catch back up,” Matheny said, explaining the water is running into his property from both directions. “Based on that, I feel there’s approximately 200 gallons, per minute, of water coming out of this old drain tile.”
He said the water doesn’t equalize until there’s approximately two feet standing in the backyard. And when there’s two feet in the yard, there’s double that trapped in the basements.
But neighbors, like Kevin Dailey, say the issue has nothing to do with terracotta pipe.
“You can’t create a problem and then look around and say, ‘Gee, how do we fix it?” Dailey said, claiming much of the flooding problem can be traced to property owners improperly filling in a natural stream that helped pull water out of Richard.
“This problem began and exists because the natural creek that ran at the foot of Eastgate Hill has been filled in and blocked due to three landowners in the community of Richard …” Dailey said. “These landowners have added up to three feet of filler dirt without permits in a flood zone.”
When Dailey previously brought his concerns to the commission, the body told him it was out of their hands and that he needed to work with the floodplain coordinator.
That’s basically what was explained to Matheny on Wednesday.
“The commission has indicated in the past that we’re willing to be a participant in the solution down there. However, I don’t know what the solution is. We don’t have any jurisdiction over private property matters,” Commission President Jeff Arnett said.
