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The Issues
Neighborhood Water Problems
Residents of the Dicken neighborhood face a bit of water irony: on the
one hand, there is abundant water in our backyards, our school's yards,
and our sewers; yet on the other hand, there is too little water in our
water-supply pipes. What's going on here?
Neighborhood Water Problem Survey
Shortly after the February 4, 2003 Planning Commission meeting, the
Friends of Dicken Woods conducted a neighborhood survey to determine the
extent of water-related problems throughout the area. Using
door-to-door, telephone and email methods, the Friends contacted
approximately 70 neighborhood households, asking about water-related
problems in the respondent's yards and/or basements, and about water
pressure problems in the water-supply system. The results: 76% of the
neighbors reported water problems in their yards, 33% reported water
problems in their basements, and 35% reported low water pressure
problems in their water-supply pipes. Many neighbors reported spending
significant sums of money to correct these problems, and very few - in
fact only 2 - reported contacting the city regarding low water pressure
problems. This last fact is particularly important since the City
Planning Department staff reported (at the 2/4/03 Planning Commission
meeting, in response to neighbors raising these issues at the original
11/19/02 meeting) that the city believes the area water pressure is fine
because they'd had so few complaints. And so the survey confirms what
we already knew: water pressure is a problem. The area residents,
however, have carried on in relative silence.
Low Water Pressure
Why is water pressure a problem? Very simply, the Dicken
neighborhood is located adjacent to the highest land in the City of Ann
Arbor. Our water pressure is low, in large part, because we sit on high
land. Making matters worse, Scio Township is supplied out of the same
water pressure district (the West High Service District) as the Dicken
neighborhood, with the intense development pressure in Scio Township
further affecting our water pressure. According to the City of Ann
Arbor Water Utilities Department website: "There is no elevated water
tank in this district so pressure is maintained by constant pumping and
is controlled by release of water into another district through a remote
controlled valve."
The City Planning Department Staff Report for the February 4, 2003
Planning Commission meeting said: "This area is a high point for the
west side of Ann Arbor so water pressure will naturally be less than
areas of lower elevation. Efforts to increase the water pressure in
this area will make other areas of the water-pressure district have too
much water pressure."
Dicken area residents, and especially those who live on the higher
ground west and southwest of Dicken Woods, are concerned that further
development in the area will only exacerbate the low water pressure
problems. If there is not enough water pressure now, won't it only get
worse with 58 new higher-density townhouses added in?
Area Wetlands, and Stressed Sewer Capacities
As for abundant neighborhood surface water, we don't yet have
definitive answers, though we are actively investigating. We do know
the Dicken area and it's wider surroundings are home to many wetlands
today. In addition, aerial photos from 1947 show large surface ponds in
the neighborhood, where houses and Dicken Elementary School now sit.
Today, the playfields at Dicken Elementary are often so wet, and for
such sustained periods, as to be totally unusable by the school
children. Important questions have been raised, as yet unanswered, about
the hydrology of the area, the sources of the wetlands in Dicken Woods,
and the role of Dicken Woods in the wider wetlands system, as well as
in Allen's and Mallett's Creeks. That's a lot of questions.
Basement flooding too has been an increasingly urgent problem in the
Dicken area, as well as in the downstream areas of the Dartmoor, Glen
Leven, and Morehead neighborhoods. All of these impacted areas were
specific subjects of the Ann Arbor Sanitary Sewer Overflow Study Task
Force and its
final report to City Council in Spring, 2001. In response to these
emerging problems, the City has recently begun the massive footing drain
disconnect project.
The two sanitary sewer routes that could service a new development in
Dicken Woods both currently suffer severe surcharging problems, precisely
where a new Dicken Woods development would feed in to them. Any new
development in Dicken Woods would add a significant burden to an already
beyond-capacity local sewer system. For an area sitting at the "top of
the hill" and draining towards the Huron River through two stressed
creek systems, this is a bad idea.
And so we find ourselves in the unhappy position whereby Ann Arbor is
spending millions of dollars (in the midst of the most severe state and
municipal budget crisis in over half a century) to correct sanitary and
storm sewer infrastructure problems which have resulted in large part
from increased city development and the introduction of massive new
amounts of impervious surface. The choice before us today is whether to
continue taxing our overburdened infrastructure by forcing a large-mass
multi-building townhouse development into a special natural area where
it simply doesn't belong, or, instead, to save the natural area and
thereby enjoy all the environmental, social, and economic benefits that
would result.
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