Schaumburg park could ease floods

The fierce rainstorm of last Aug. 23 is already a distant memory for those unaffected, but Schaumburg officials have spent months studying why one southeast neighborhood was so hard hit by flooding.

Residents of Niagara Avenue, near Sunset Park, were asking the village to replace the open drainage ditch in front of their homes with a buried storm sewer as early as September.

Erosion and blockage of the ditch during the storm had caused rising water to creep up toward the elevated houses until residents themselves cleared out debris.

But the recently completed study has shown officials that there's a more pressing need for a different project first.

Village officials plan to meet soon with the Schaumburg Park District about the possibility of lowering the 1.6-acre Sunset Park so that two-thirds of it would hold storm water during especially heavy rains.

The project would cost the park district neither money nor recreational space at the park, but only the few months needed to complete the work, Schaumburg Public Works Director Steve Weinstock said.

Even if money to design the project was found immediately, though, the actual construction work couldn't realistically begin until next spring, he added.

Only afterward would the village then be ready to try to meet the residents of Niagara Avenue halfway on their drainage ditch request.

One of the questions that plagued last fall's discussions between the village and the residents was whether the improvement homeowners were asking for was a public or private one.

At Thursday's Engineering and Public Works Committee meeting, staff proposed asking the residents to pay for the equivalent of a 15-inch sewer pipe. The village would then pay the additional amount to make the actual pipe 36 inches in diameter.

The total cost of the improvement the village is proposing -- for the north side of Niagara between Summit and Sunset drives -- is $170,000.

But officials also considered that the work on Sunset Park itself could reduce the drainage ditch improvement on Niagara to a merely aesthetic one.

"There's a possibility that when we do the first phase of the work, we won't need to do the second," Village Manager Ken Fritz said.