Aldermen Lisa Mellone and Renee' Lowerr on Brookfield Flooding

Photos are from Kinsey Park Pond today.

The following are 2 email alerts from our District 7 Aldermen and Tom Grisa:

District 7 Residents,

Some of you have called and left messages, and I am now able to catch up. My street has been without power since early this morning until about 3:30 pm today. Renee Lowerr has been accessible and many of you have called her for assistance in reaching the appropriate personnel to help solve these issues and report your various problems. I know many of you have flooded basements including some with sewage back ups. The combination of power outages, 5+ inches of rain in less than 8 hours, and local flash flooding have contributed to these back ups. Copied below is an email from the Director of Public Works, Tom Grisa summarizing the events of the last 2 days. Please note these phone numbers for future reference as the forecast calls for a stormy week: If you have a basement sewage backup emergency, please contact the treatment plant 782-0199, or if it is street flooding or overland flooding call highway at 782-5029.

Renee and I will do our best to find you answers and assistance as we all continue with the clean up process. Your patience is appreciated.

Lisa Mellone 780-0805

Renee Lowerr 853-9657

Email from Tom Grisa, Director of Public Works:

First of all, I would like to inform you of what happened and is happening regarding the storm. I am sending this from home as my neighborhood is underwater and the street out of my house is flooded and I cannot get to work.

Obviously, we have had a torrential downpour in Brookfield. We are doing the best we can to deal with the myriad of problems caused by this massive storm. Flooding exists in numerous locations. We have fielded well over 100 phone calls at the treatment plant. I am certain the PD and FD have even more. We expect humdreds more this morning and people awake to messes.

According to our rain gauges at the plant we had 5.8 inches of rain from 4:30 pm to midnight. That is a higher rate of rain than occurred in the 1998 flood (8 inches of rain in 12 hours). Roads are closed in many areas, streets underwater, creeks over their banks, yards flooded, basement flooded, sump pumps not able to keep up, flooded basements draining down the floor drain into the sanitary sewer causing basement backups elsewhere, etc.

Our treatment plant normally handles 7 million gallons per day (MGD). Our treatment plant is designed to treat a maximum of 50 MGD. Last night we peaked at 66 MGD. That is 50% higher than we have ever had before since the plant was upgraded in 1996-1999 (previous record 44 MGD). I don’t know how it compares to the 1998 flows. Our Riverview interceptor (along the Fox River) normally operates at 2 MGD and was flowing at 28 MGD for a time.

We have placed bypass pumps out in several locations, and some have reduced the backups, but others are still pumping.

Power outages also were prevalent in many areas resulting in sump pumps not working and floor drains taking the flow into the sanitary sewer – thus the backups.

We have had crews out yesterday afternoon and throughout the night. We ran out of barricades for closing roads per the Policeman I spoke with this morning. Crews continue to work today to alleviate things as best they can. There just isn’t much we can do with the incredible amount of rain we had. But they are doing what they can. There is just no where for the water to go.

Please know that public works staff are doing whatever we can to address these conditions. But again, there is only so much that can be done. In some cases we can’t even get to sites because of flooded conditions. I drove around until 9 pm last night and already had trouble navigating my way through the roads. Nearly drove into 3 feet of water on Burlawn Parkway as in the dark the water was difficult to see. Now as I said earlier I can’t even get out of our court.

We continue to pump sanitary sewers, clean off inlets, etc. Inlets near my house this morning at 5 am were completely covered with mulch from people’s gardens and from the Lamplighter Park. That obviously prevents the area from draining. I waded into the water a bit (only where I knew it was safe) and cleared some of the inlets and the big one for the pond. But I do not advocate anyone from wading into water as it can be extremely dangerous.

If you have a basement backup emergency, please contact the treatment plant 782-0199, or if it is street flooding or overland flooding call highway at 782-5029. If you have info that would be helpful for us in evaluating the storm which we will do in the coming weeks, please email me at work grisa@ci.brookfield.wi.us

That is all I know for now. I will update you all when we have more information.

[Tom Grisa]

Brookfield's Rainwater Woes and Flooding -DO NOT DRIVE THROUGH DEEP WATER, you can blow your engine!

Links:
Practically Speaking, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Vicki Mckenna