The Camp Verde Town Council has faced repeated complaints from town residents over issues of water drainage. On Sept. 12, a group of locals presented pictures and video of recent flooding on numerous private properties, notably on a particularly heavy monsoon storm on July 12 of this year.
At a work session on Oct. 10, the council discussed what could be done to deal with the drainage problems that continue to affect the town. In the view of Town Manager Russ Martin, who led the discussion at the meeting, while there are things the town can and should do to improve flooding issues for residents, the town will be faced with some difficulties in handling drainage issues in its area no matter what happens.
“I can guarantee you go out there on a storm like we had last week, and water is running like crazy,”
Martin said. “Everybody has been dealing with that for generations, but it’s a constant maintenance issue.”
According to Martin, part of the issue in many neighborhoods is that the roads end up becoming major arteries for floodwaters in the case of heavy rains, with the water owing downhill on streets and on to people’s property.
“To cut the road and put new culverts in, we’ll have to practically shut down Salt Mine [Road], and you know anybody who lives out there will be madder than a hornet because there is no other way to get out of there,” said Camp Verde Public Works Director Ron Long, highlighting an example of how difficult it would be to x some of the problems.
“I say this with all due respect to the history of this town, and I don’t want to insult anybody, but we didn’t do a good job in development of the town so we have a lot of lack of drainage,” Martin said. He pointed to area on the west side of town, near Gattis Wash, that is mostly undeveloped, but which the town anticipates will be more heavily developed in coming years once construction on State Route 260 is finished. According to Martin, drainage has to be an essential part of development so the town does not deal with even more complaints like this in the future.
“It’s absolutely overwhelming to think of how big this town is in so many ways,” Martin said. “One of the bigger problems we have is drainage and it’s not something we go to bed at night thinking we’ve solved because we’ll probably never have it solved.”
In addition to discussing drainage, the council examined options for recycling. In May, Sedona Recycles informed the town that it would no longer service the town, due to costs associated with maintenance of the recycling company truck.
The council discussed possible options: Doing nothing and allowing those who want to recycle to pay or travel to sites where they can drop their recycling, working with the county transfer station to place bins and transfer materials there via staff, hiring staff to bring recycling material up to Sedona Recycles, or bringing in a new private company to handle recycling. No resolution was reached at the meeting.
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
