New Arlington Heights Flood Debate Surfaces After Problem Persists
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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Years of frustration, hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and a new debate about how to fix it.
The question is whether Fort Worth can afford to stop flooding in the Arlington Heights neighborhood with a massive drainage project or whether it should just demolish flood prone homes.
The city has spent millions on drainage in Arlington Heights already and still the flooding problems persist.
The council saw a briefing Tuesday night with basically two options for Arlington Heights: build new, expensive drainage or offer to buy up flood prone homes and replace them with green space.
"We have been doing several solutions and they have helped to some degree," said Council Member Dennis Shingleton who represents the West Fort Worth neighborhood. "But they're not the answer. And I'm not sure that this is the answer either. But it's another pathway."
That pathway would offer to buy out homeowners in the most commonly flooded areas. Additionally, the plan would use federal FEMA grant money to buy the houses, demolish them and turn the land into green space that could accommodate. It's an idea the Arlington Heights Neighborhood Association said it's against.
The association's president, Brenda Helmer, wrote the council saying, in part, "There's no guarantee that removing homes will even fix the flooding problem. Then, we're stuck with a bunch of empty lots that FEMA will not allow to ever be developed, lots that generate no property taxes and the City has to maintain."
Shingleton said the city has explored a complicated new drainage system leading from the neighborhood to the Trinity River going underneath an interstate and railroad tracks.
"That's just an extraordinary -- millions of dollars -- and a difficult engineering feat," Shingleton said.
Arlington Heights and their neighbors to the west said the city has a bigger drainage problem upstream from too much development pouring run off water into an outdated drainage system that ends in their neighborhood.
"So, if the city were to resolve to fix that problem or our problem it would help all of these areas," said Teri Kramer who lives near the hardest hit area and said her neighborhood is starting to see flooding issues too. "So it's bigger than just our neighborhood, for West Arlington Heights."
Fort Worth would have to apply for FEMA funds in January if it wanted to pursue the demolition route.
