Beatrice drainage recommendations come with high costs

BEATRICE – Beatrice elected officials have approved two drainage studies by a consulting firm covering areas in east and south Beatrice, which recommend potential improvements. Just how many will be undertaken is a money issue.

One of the studies involved what’s called tributary 44 in east Beatrice, where two drainage basins flow together…joining near 25th and Scott. City Administrator Tobias Tempelmeyer says the basins impact up to 52 structures, based on a range of storm sizes…from a two-year frequency storm to a 100-year storm.

"What they recommended a lot of, was upstream storage. Build detention cells on the north end to help hold water back and let it slowly drain into the rest of the drainage system....as a way to make sure you had enough pipe space to do those things. They have storage on both the west side and east side, there. There's also some inlets at very places...High and Grant Street are a couple of those. There's a storm sewer that runs from about 19th and Lincoln that actually pulls water back over to this particular drainage basin. They recommended undoing that and letting that water stay in its drainage basin."

The various improvements suggested in east Beatrice range from about $350,000 to $2.2 million. One current effort of the city is to encourage water detention areas in new developments.

"As different developments happen or projects occur, we'll look to see what parts or pieces we can pick up. Some of them are quite large, and so we'll have to look for other funding."

On the south Beatrice study…the Belvedere area between 3rd and 4th Streets, Tempelmeyer said consultants found no structures were impacted by a storm event that might occur once in every fifty years. There are some recommendations for improvements.

"One of them is that there's an existing storm water system at 3rd and Belvedere that runs back back through some back yards there. They recommended abandoning that pipe...putting it out by the street, and extending that drainage system a little bit further to the south there. The culvert that crosses Marlborough is an existing 36-inch culvert. They recommend replacing that with dual, 48-inch culverts. So, a significant upgrade...so that gets kind of expensive."

At the north end of the Belvedere drainage area near Sharpless Avenue, consultants recommended replacing 30-inch diameter culverts with 48-inch culverts. "The issue down there starts to be, in order to get that size of pipe to fit under the street, you've got to redo about a block of street to get the fit....and so, it becomes an issue." 

Cost estimates for the Belvedere area on various projects range from about $190,000 to over $800,000.
Grant funds paid for the consulting studies that examined the drainage basins.