Engineers closer to Mallard Point solution

More drainage tile and regular maintenance of a detention basin and wetland are the things engineers for Sugar Grove, Kane County and the Rob Roy Drainage District believe will fix drainage problems for the Mallard Point subdivision.

And there is the possibility of borrowing federal economy-stimulus money, at 2 percent interest, to pay for the work.

But plans aren't finished, so there is still no cost estimate. There is also no breakdown of who should pay how much, whether it is residents of the Mallard Point and Rolling Oaks subdivisions, the village as a whole or Rob Roy.

About two dozen Mallard Point and Rolling Oaks residents heard an update at the village board meeting Tuesday from the engineer the village hired for the project.

Trotter and Associates engineer Mark Bushnell said it is likely the ad hoc engineering committee will suggest that a second field tile be run north-south through the subdivision and that the existing tile be re-routed around a detention basin to prevent groundwater from leaking out and in to the pond, which is just supposed to handle stormwater.

The second field tile would take groundwater, including that being pumped out of people's basements, and send it south to a ditch at Jericho Road.

He noted that the original Mallard Point plans called for more tile, and that several restrictor pipes from the basin to the wetland were not placed where they are supposed to be, are smaller than called for and don't have materials around them that would have prevented plants from growing and clogging them.

Homeowners are upset that the village board is considering enacting a special tax on them to pay for any remediation.

Rolling Oaks drains to the same basin, but isn't having the flooding Mallard Point residents do. They think the village should pay because, they contend, it didn't adequately check the work of the subdivision's builders in the 1990s, and it didn't make the developer form a homeowner's association to take over maintenance, as was called for in Mallard Point's annexation agreement. Associations for other post-1990 Sugar Grove subdivisions pay for such work, or the residents pay a special tax.

"I don't understand why things wouldn't have been checked ahead of time," resident Julie Walker said.

President Sean Michels said there weren't the engineering capabilities there are today, and suggested that heavy rains in recent years might have changed some of the paths of subsurface water flow.

Another woman asked why bonds put up by developers to guarantee required improvements were done were released by the village board in the 1990s and 2000s, when apparently those improvements weren't done as planned. Bushnell pointed out that besides the village, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Army Corps of Engineers signed off on much of the work back then.

Bushnell said he expects the committee to have a plan done within two months. The village board is scheduled to discuss the special tax issue March 2.