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Source: Stormwater Magazine, March-April 2009
By Margaret Buranen

The West Glendover Stormwater Improvement Project in Lexington, KY, is an unusual project that resulted from extraordinary cooperation on the part of all parties involved. They managed not only to cooperate to create a functional and attractive stormwater management solution but also to resolve concerns that were sometimes diametrically opposed.

Locating the stormwater project in an arboretum stopped flooding to nearby homes, enhanced the arboretum’s collection of plants, and allowed the public to see a large-scale rain garden.

The project resulted from several years of complaints by residents of the Glendover Road area about flooding in their streets and basements. When Lisa and Todd Mudd came home one day only to find their children’s toys floating in a foot of water in their basement, they added their complaints to those of their neighbors.

As time went by and more flooding occurred, Todd Mudd added a check valve and then a sump pump to the basement. The devices reduced the flooding, but there was always some water in his basement after a hard rainfall.

Across Glendover Road from the Mudds, Mary and Edward Kasarkis also coped with a flooded basement after every major rainfall. “When the ground became saturated, there was nowhere else for the water to go but into your basement,” Mary Kasarkis explains, recalling that one time she had three city engineers in her backyard observing the flooding. Both she and her husband credit Linda Gorton, then–Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) Council representative for the district, for helping the different groups work together to solve the flooding problem.

In the summer of 2000, the LFUCG Division of Engineering mailed questionnaires to residents to better understand the scope of the flooding. A series of meetings with city government staff members and residents followed. When the extent of the flooding was understood, a project for the area was added to the city’s list of stormwater projects that awaited funding.

In 2000, the West Glendover Stormwater Improvement Project was added to the city’s official list of stormwater projects. By policy, projects have to wait on the list for two years before being started. This time lapses anyway because of lack of funding, because there are usually about 100 projects on the list.

In early 2005, the West Glendover Stormwater Improvement Project was funded by the LFUCG Council. Gregory Lubeck, a LFUCG engineer since 2002, was assigned to manage the project. Among his first actions was to issue a Request for Qualifications for design work from private engineering firms.

One possible way to accomplish the goal would have been installing larger storm sewer pipes to channel the water toward a main collection pipe. This approach would have meant tearing up the streets of existing neighborhoods, causing traffic problems and inciting complaints from residents.

Another possible action was for the city to buy the flooded homes and demolish them, creating open spaces. At least 10 homes were involved, each worth about $200,000, so the cost of paying the homeowners alone meant that this approach would be too expensive.

Lubeck felt that the logical approach was also the most cost-effective: Slow the flow of water by taking advantage of the nearby arboretum’s location and natural features.

The arboretum is situated on land owned by the University of Kentucky (UK). The area was once the working farm for faculty and students in UK’s College of Agriculture. Now it is the largest open space within the city limits and contains two watersheds. The arboretum, which occupies over 100 acres of the land, is funded jointly by UK and the LFUCG.

Stormwater naturally flows from northeast to southwest as it moves along the arboretum’s rolling hills. Backyards of residents on Glendover Road end along the south to southwest border of the arboretum. Glendover Road slopes downhill, increasing stormwater flow for residents at the lower, western end of the street.

But while the solution seemed logical, the hardest part of the project “was getting everybody to agree that this was the solution, getting consensus,” Lubeck says. The major reason for the project’s success was “establishing the comfort level with the arboretum folks that this would work in with their master plan, that it wasn’t just a hole for water, that it would have an artistic look,” he adds.

Lubeck did his best to warn the engineering firms wanting the design contract that the project was complex because it had “a lot of stakeholders with different interests to protect.” He also told them that a minimum number of meetings with arboretum staff members and other people involved would be required.

Establishing a stormwater project on or near the arboretum had been discussed for several years. A few years earlier, Gorton; Lubeck; Marcia Farris, the director of the arboretum; James Lempke, curator of native plants; Warren Denney, University of Kentucky architect; and some other UK officials “all got together and walked the area,” Farris says. They agreed that locating the stormwater project there was a good possibility.

Farris presented the proposed project to the arboretum’s board of directors. Six members are from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, and six are from the University of Kentucky. The board supported her recommendation for the project.

With all parties involved tentatively in favor, the project shifted from being a possible alternative to the traditional concrete channels system for stormwater management to being a future reality, if all details could be worked out satisfactorily.

Farris and Lempke “were in on the project from conception. Jim [Lempke] and I even sat in as the design firms were interviewed,” Farris says.

PB Americas of Lexington was awarded the $58,000 design contract in April 2005. PB’s supervising engineer for the project, Douglas Mynear, and its landscape architect, Molly Davis, soon realized, as Mynear explains, that “issues that were important to one particular group were not viewed as important to one or more of the other groups.”

Residents with flooded basements wanted to know only when the problem would be fixed. Adjacent residents whose homes were not flooded didn’t care what was done, as long as relieving the flooding of their neighbors didn’t cause flooding at their homes.

The arboretum staff, board, and friends group members were concerned about damage to plants and that the stormwater project would fit into the arboretum’s master plan. ...

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