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Courtney Orton reportingDraper homeowners are drying out from what was a very soggy three days. Water seeped into the basements of at least seven homes.
Officials found a railroad tie blocking a pipe that allowed spring runoff to drain properly. The railroad tie was removed, but if the pipe gets blocked again, residents fear their basements could fill up again, too.
Fans and humidifiers are running on full blast in Lisa Tolk's basement. Twenty-four hours ago, her basement was full of water. She says, "We're thinking that ours is probably going to be close to $10,000 [in damage].
Water kept seeping in,and no one could figure out why. Luckily, officials found the source of the problem. Tolk says, "Once they took it out, the water level just dropped immediately."
A railroad tie was blocking a pipe that runs underneath a creek Draper City Manager Layne Long says, "Once they pulled that, the water level dropped significantly in the land drains. We're hoping that solved the problem."
Salt Lake County maintains the pipe under Willow Creek, but there was another problem: a drain system that was installed by the developer of the property. "Typically, a developer will come into an area, and if they have a high water table or water problems, then the developer develops a solution for that problem, and in these particular areas that is what happened," Long says.
A number of people are involved, making it difficult to decide who is responsible to fix the problem. Tolk says, "Everybody points fingers at the other guy, and so we have to determine whose responsibility it's going to be to do a more long-term solution to prevent things from happening again."
Salt Lake County says it's Draper City's problem, the city says it's the homeowners' problem. Long says, "New people have moved in, bought these homes. When the developer came in, they put in a land drain system that the homeowners are responsible to maintain and make sure that system is functioning properly. I think a lot of them just have no clue about that."
It's unclear at this point, if the developer installed the drains with approval from Salt Lake County and Draper City. That's something the homeowners in this neighborhood would like to know. For now, they're relieved they're not pumping out water.
E-mail: corton@ksl.com
