Town Engineer Mark
O’Dell, for his part, noted that the Val’s Pizza lift station performed
exactly as it was intended to perform during storm: it pumped like a champ,
in fact it pumped some 10,000 gallons of runoff from the alley behind Val’s,
the lowest area in town.
The only problem:
two storm drains in that alley ended up being blocked by debris, which
caused some minor flooding at Val’s despite the pump’s best efforts, O’Dell
said.
Migratory Shorebird
Sanctuary
Earlier in the
evening, the Porter County Parks Foundation made roughly the same
presentation to the Stormwater Management Board that it did to the Town
Council on April 14: on the proposed migratory shorebird sanctuary which the
foundation is hoping to create on the old wetland site west of 11th Street
and directly opposite the entrance to Westchester Intermediate School.
“Right now it’s a
desolate place,” Dick Maxey said, but restored it would provide an excellent
habitat for migratory shorebirds and a boost to tourism, as birders from
around the state would be happy to drive to Chesterton for a shot at seeing
rarities.
The trick will be
to find funding for the project, Maxey said, and while the foundation is not
in any way asking the town for a handout, it would be helpful if the town
could see its way clear to applying for grants on the foundation’s behalf,
inasmuch “as a lot of grants require government agencies to apply and the
Porter County Parks Foundation is not a government agency.”
One thing did catch
the interest of President Thomas Kopko: what impact would restoration of the
wetland have on surrounding properties?
Matt Keiser of
Abonmarche, an engineering firm working with the foundation, said in reply
that he’s hopeful of the foundation’s receiving a grant from the Northwest
Indiana Regional Development Authority, which would be used to cover the
cost of a hydrological study, with precisely that issue in mind.
April in Review
In April the
Stormwater Utility ran a surplus of $11,612 and in the year-to-date is
running a surplus of $61,811.