From: John Boldt, technical adviser to Citizens for Haw Creek Committee
Columbus
I wonder if local residents know or remember that:
1. Haw Creek, during the June 7, 2008, flood in Columbus caused an estimated $500 million in damages, and among the more significant impacts was that Columbus Regional Hospital was closed for about five months.
2. The existing problem with Haw Creek is that the water course has significant accumulated sediments resulting in a greatly reduced capacity in places it is full of fallen trees and debris. It has many areas of eroding stream banks and has two bridges that are considerably undersized. If one had been standing on the railroad spur bridge on the southern end of Haw Creek on the night of the flood and looked north, one would have seen numerous buildings and cars flooded. But if one had looked south into the East Fork White River floodplain, one would have noted that the water level was about 8 feet lower. Isn’t that a duh? Yet, the "experts" who were hired to analyze Haw Creek concluded that the flooding would have been the same with or without the recently replaced smaller railroad spur bridge?
3. Little or nothing has been done since 2008 to reduce the flood damage potential in the low lying areas of Columbus.
4. It’s not a well-known fact that all three of the facilities that suffered the most flooding damage from the 2008 flood (CRH, and Cummins’ Plant 1 and Tech Center) all have basements under them even though they were built on the banks of Haw Creek. How "bright" an idea was that by the planners of those buildings knowing that by history Haw Creek frequently flooded and caused considerable damage.
5. The Republic newspaper recently archived its papers going back to 1877. A county surveyor’s office staff member did a word search of all years of record for any mention of Haw Creek and flooding damage reports. There were about 13 major events during that period with a frequency of once every 13 years. (2008 + 13 = 2021). It’s not a matter of "if" we may experience another damaging flood in Columbus, but "when.”
6. Several years ago a "Citizens For Haw Creek Committee" was formed and submitted a petition to the county drainage board to convert a so-called mutual drain into a regulated drain. This would have given the county drainage board (or perhaps an intercounty board) the authority to take the necessary steps and actions to make improvements to Haw Creek to reduce the flooding potential. After two well-attended public hearings, the petition was turned down because the Citizens For Haw Creek Committee were impossibly unable to obtain the signatures of the landowners who back about 100 years ago constructed the so-called mutual drain. The fact that these landowners has been deceased for say 50 years was not challenged as being impossible and perhaps ruled by judicial authorities as unachievable and thus not a valid requirement.
Enough said.
