Resident’s persistence leads to Ortega drainage resolution
Although there is no official waterway near her Ortega home, Elizabeth Howard has often felt she had lake-front property. Referring to the deep puddle that routinely gathered at the foot of her driveway after it rained as “Lake Howard,” Howard is grateful the city has finally agreed to fix it right, after more than seven years of complaints.
“It has been flooding for years,” said Howard, of the land that has been eroding underneath her driveway at the corner of Ortega Boulevard and Yacht Club Road. And her driveway was not the only one affected. The driveways of at least four or five of her neighbors were also slowly sinking.
“I’m 5-feet tall and for me to take the garbage out to the street after it rained it would come up to my midcalf. I’d call up and complain, but nobody was really listening. “Of course, people (from the city) would come out and look at it, and it would be a sunny and beautiful day and they would think, ‘she’s crazy.’ But I would keep calling. We have children in the neighborhood who like to collect tadpoles in it when it rains because it doesn’t drain. After the rain stops, it would take three days to drain and four days to totally dry up, but it never really dries up,” she said.
One day earlier this fall, Howard, who has lived in her home for 34 years, got lucky. After contacting District 14 Councilwoman Randy DeFoor and calling the city for the umpteenth time, a workman came out to inspect it after it had just rained.
“I told him I was going to take my garbage out and he could see how deep it was. It was midcalf on me, and I told him I was going to splurge and buy waders just to bring my garbage out. He walked down the street and looked at all the other driveways and said it was out of his department. He called another guy and the next thing I knew, there was an engineer out here and he said, ‘this is pretty bad.’ They started to work on it in October. They even commented that the water was worse than they thought because it took them so long to pump out the water just so they could do the work,” she recalled.
“It had been building up over many years. A previous owner of a neighbor’s house years and years ago had replaced their driveway and it created not all of the problem, but it didn’t help it,” she said. “It made it worse for certain driveways because it held water and interrupted the flow. And then their driveway was sinking, too.”
Also, exacerbating the problem was the repaving Ortega Boulevard. The problem became worse because the road was then higher than the driveway allowing runoff from the road to flow into it. “If I were driving a sedan or a station wagon, the undercarriage would hit the street as I turned into my driveway,” she said. “If I wanted to get out of my driveway, I would have to stop at the sidewalk and, along with checking for pedestrians, I would have to carefully check for traffic because I needed to build momentum just to get up on the road,” she said.
Howard said she is grateful the road work will be finally done by the end of the November. She also said she has been impressed with the City’s road crew working on the project and noted that they have been very polite, considerate, and easy to work with.
“I’m glad it’s finally being resolved and that the construction will be finished and everyone can drive down Ortega Boulevard without worrying about it,” she said.
By Marcia Hodgson
Resident Community News
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading... 
