LETTER: Insights on Allendale Flooding
In a letter to MyRye.com, Rye Golf Club member and former City Councilman Mack Cunningham provides some insights on Allendale flooding.
The Ida flooding video provided to MyRye from the Allendale Drive resident requires cause and effect analysis.
The Allendale homeowner lives at a low point of Allendale Drive and storm runoff from higher neighborhood elevations and intersecting Griffon Place overwhelmed the City’s storm drains (4) located at Allendale’s lowest elevation. Rye Golf Club’s golf course has a City storm drain (hole#5) connecting to Allendale’s City storm main. The City’s Allendale neighborhood storm sewer drain configuration has been in existence for over 70 years.
The Allendale storm sewer main empties into the Blind Brook watershed behind Disbrow Park’s Sterling Field (approximately 1/2 mi away). The (1) storm sewer main also connects Throne Place’s* storm sewers.
As you have previously reported, the majority of City street drains did not have sufficient capacity to process Ida’s 9″ of rainfall including Allendale’s storm water and adjoining Rye Golf storm drain. Ida’s unprocessed storm water flooded City residential properties inside and outside the local flood map zones.
Rye Golf Club’s golf course property and City’s storm drain captures runoff from Soundview Ave. Soundview Ave parallels Allendale Drive intersected by the Rye Golf Club golf course.
Soundview Ave has no storm drains or road curbs and the 800′ downgrade from Boston Post Road contributed to a voluminous amount of IDA runoff into an existing golf course creek and underground drainage pipe. Creek’s water connects to the aforementioned City storm sewer.
Rye Golf Club’s property was Soundview’s runoff conduit and not the primary flooding source of the Allendale house. The other Allendale lower elevation house flooded because of the abutting Allendale storm drain(s) backup and the property’s car garage located below grade.
The City has hired an engineer to study the installation of new Soundview Ave curbs redirecting hard surface runoff onto a RGC/City wooded buffer drainage area located 600′ further east on Soundview Ave. The pending engineering report may result in City road engineering improvements & golf course improvements significantly reducing Soundview Ave water runoff to the golf course and RGC/City property storm drain.
Regards,
Mack Cunningham
Rye Golf Club Member
*Throne Place housing development was completed in the 1960s and new storm drains were connected to a pre-existing sewer main.
