Saturday, March 16, 2024

Rea Road Gillespie Property Flooding Concerns

We've seen a lot of push back and dismissive response from RK Investments and Ed driggs regarding our flooding concerns.

Most often their answer is the Piper Glen area is uphill from the Gillespie Property.

This is true. So it is really interesting when you see first hand Four Mile Creek flowing backwards (uphill) during a heavy downpour.

As we have said before the expansion of 485 has added an additional 35 acres of impervious surface area that now flows into Piper Glen and Four Mile Creek.

485 storm drains flow into three creeks that flow south to north across Piper Glen from 485 to Four Mile Creek.

Shepard's, Schitt's and Stuart's Creeks has all changed dramatically in the last two years. Now even a light rain brings flooding to back yards. Erosion is a big concern and damage even before the January 9th event has been costly.

Landscaping, decks and retaining walls, and massive amount of silt and sediment dumped into Piper Glen's Mitchell Pond No. 6. 

One inch of rain now generates an additional 945,000 gallons of runoff water from 485. Runoff water volume that we did not see two years ago.

On January 9th the Piper Glen area saw 3.43 inches of rain in less than 2 hours.That is more than 3 million additional gallons of water in less than 24 hours.



The above is video from January 9th flooding of Shepard's Creek in Piper Glen.

It is important to understand Charlotte Stormwater planning does not account for zoning changes. Nor does it currently account for design changes in 485.

Finally if its this bad uphill from the Gillespie Property just how bad could it get with an additional 37 acres of new impervious surface from a developed Gillespie Property that will add an additional 1,000,000 gallons of runoff water everytime it rains one inch or more?



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It looks like your pool is about to be run over. Doesn't this happen all the time? Seems really close though.

Anonymous said...

No way that's normal.

Anonymous said...

We have friends on Schitt's Creek they are not happy about the flooding the loss of their deck or that you or someone with the culd has named it Schitt's Creek although they admit that it is funny they doubt it will help with resale value.

Tom @ RK Investors said...

I missed this one. This is misleading too. Unlike existing Piper drainage or the 485 drainage, new development on this site of any kind would require the new storm water treatment and detention requirements be met, so that storm would not have generated any more peak flow from the Gillespie property than it generates today. Happy to sit with storm water folks and have this conversation to help educate neighbors on this, as it is a real issue in the whole basin.

Our proposed plan is looking at options to exceed this minimum and we will discuss this in future meetings.