Evansville Flooding Project

The first of four major projects to fix the citys flooding problems is underway. The city announced an engineering contract to start construction on a multi million dollar sewer project. Last month the mayor announced he was going ahead with four recommendations from the storm water task force. The city plans on improving or adding trunk lines the four areas the task forced said were most critical. Theyre starting with the Jeanette Cass Addition on Evansvilles southeastside. "Someone finally heard me," says Rita Skinner. It appears everyone is hearing Rita Skinner. The media has descended on her driveway because she was one of the loudest voices for improving the flooding issues in her neighborhood after last Septembers deluge. "In my backyward it was 32 to36 inches in my garage it was 32 inches." So high it took the life of two of her dogs that lived in the fenced in area. "Everyone who knows me knows im just a nervous wreck if it rains all night theres nothing you can do." Soon Skinner and her neighbors can live through the rain without worry. "Were moving forward on another project we have hired an engineering firm to begin working on design of this," says Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel. The city is improving and reparing trunk lines in four areas to stop the floods like last year. This is the smallest of the four projects only about 3 million of the 54 million dollar price but its not small for the people who live in this area. "This has been a horrible ordeal," says Skinner. But now the ordeal is about to end after about two years. This is just the first 30 percent of the project. The city needs to get that started so they can start a financing and construction plan. They expect that to begin by the start of next year. The mayor says theyre still working on getting the other three projects started.