City of Beatrice examining storm water solutions

BEATRICE - Study recommendations for improved storm drainage in two areas of Beatrice will be going to city officials for consideration.
A public open house was held Tuesday at the library, to show recommendations for a Belvedere drainage area in south Beatrice, and recommendations for Tributary 44…an area of east Beatrice that includes Hannibal Park and residential area to the south.

A challenge with the Belvedere project is a lack of drainage easement for an area where significant runoff can flood back yards.  "During really intense rainfalls, some pretty deep flows between some of the houses in what would have been, kind of a not necessarily an old alley space, but an old, basically, stream bed, " said Patrick Hartman, a Senior Project Engineer for JEO Consulting. 

Hartman says the focus is to improve storm water handling facilities already on public property. Recommendations are to enlarge existing storm sewer capacity and install two new culverts near Marlborough Avenue and Sharpless Street.

"One of the outlets of that existing storm sewer system runs under private property. That discharges into the private property behind the landowner homes there.  We would be recommending bringing that into the city right-of-way. We would also be recommending two new culverts to be installed."

In east Beatrice, the challenge is keeping excess water from pouring through a residential area to the south of Hannibal Park.  Colleen Ocken is a Water Resources Engineer with J-E-O Consulting.  "There's a fair amount of drainage coming in from upstream, into a very developed area. That developed area doesn't really have capacity to handle that. So, kind of what we looked at was some storage improvements upstream and some pipe improvements throughout."

With recent federal regulations for controlling storm water runoff, one method is creation of retention or detention ponds.  "With the tributary 44 projects, we did focus on the solutions we could do within the city right-of-way or with....we looked at some property that the state owns...folks that would be more likely to partner with the city," Ocken said.  The recommendation is for water detention between Lincoln and Hoyt Streets...around the Hannibal Park and Beatrice State Developmental Center area.