Owensville residents along two blocks of East Washington Avenue and Peters Street voice concerns Monday to the Board of Aldermen about storm water run-off which flooded at least one residence and pushed debris into yards between Hickory and Walnut.

A city project to replace a drop box and add large rock to the dry creek on the north side of East Washington last fall was the site of flash flooding from what the city’s engineer called a “peak flow event.”

Travis Hernandez with the city’s contracted engineering firm Archer-Elgin, reassured residents at the meeting Monday he would look into their concerns in an attempt to “quantify flow” of storm water in the creek bed which drains rainfall from as far south as Franklin Avenue to a drop box under East Peters near Walnut.

Parts of Owensville received between 8 and 9 inches of rainfall this past week over the three-day period from Wednesday into Friday. He noted that the area has received 20 percent of the yearly average of 45 inches of rainfall in just three days based on 40 years of data.

“It’s hard to address,” said Hernandez of the peak flow events experienced recently and the costly designs needed to address these flash flooding occurrences. “It’s so costly, and not affordable to build.”

Mayor John Kamler mentioned a local record keeper who said up to 27 inches of rain had fallen in the Owensville area since July 12. Hernandez said National Weather Service data he examined showed there was between 20 to 25 inches of “radar indicated” rainfall across the northeastern portion of the city and between 15 and 20 inches in the southwestern portion of the city during the past 30 days.

To fully understand the impact of this amount of rainfall, he said he and the city will need to “quantify the numbers” to develop a plan of action. But, he cautioned, it could be extremely costly to remedy the problem — potentially a quarter to half-million dollars.

The city would also need to determine what the “downstream capacity” is for water draining toward the creek which continues behind Circle Drive and connects with the creek draining storm water from First Street down to Red Oak Drive and eventually through Memorial Park and under a box culvert beneath Highway 28 near Henry Drive.

It’s not that the problem is new, said Hernandez. Residents acknowledged there’s been a problem along the dry creek bed for 40 years. The development of the Casey’s on the former Administration Field site was mentioned but Hernandez noted there were underground retention structures installed for that project.

“Water still comes down the creek from Casey’s,” he said, adding, “Post-development was still better than pre-development” regarding storm water running off from that property.

“It’s not like we’re blaming Casey’s,” said Dawn Pike, a resident in the 300 block of East Washington. “Every year it gets deeper. Our creek is becoming a river.”

Hernandez pledged to look at hydraulics reports and hydrology studies for the affected area within the next 30 days.

The problem in that neighborhood was not unique during last week’s rain event.

City Administrator Randy Blaske noted city emergency personnel were called out overnight one night to block off Highway 28 near Highway 19 and El Dorado Drive coming out of the Walmart parking lot due to water over 28.