Valley View area residents who came to City Council Monday for an update on the city’s efforts to control flooding there had to settle for disappointing news.

The residents were hoping for protection based on the availability of funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and based on a study the city commissioned after an intense downpour in June 2021 swelled Brush Run and damaged many properties. between the boulevards.

But the study showed that $6 million worth of detention pond work would hardly “move the needle,” and further investigation by the Army Corps of Engineers showed that the only practical help — property buyouts coupled with returning the stream to a natural meandering state — would cost $40 to $50 million or more, far too much to be practical, according to Interim City Manager Nate Kissell.

“I think we’ve resigned ourselves” to dealing only with “nuisance issues” like water running down 12th Street into the neighborhood from the Brush Run area, Kissell said.

“It’s going to help, but it’s not going to fix everything,” Kissell said.

The city is also planning to do some cleanouts of the stream, where that is permitted, said Mayor Matt Pacifico.

After the meeting, Valley View resident Allen Folmar spoke with a city official, from whom he learned that the only true potential solution that might be available for neighbors like him would be to apply individually for a hazard mitigation buyout, Folmar said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s hazard mitigation buyback program provides grants that can help compensate homeowners for the value of their properties either at the current time or immediately before a flooding event, so they can move to a safe location and so their homes can be razed and their properties turned into permanent open space where flooding can cause no damage.

Folmar is interested in learning about the program but far from sure he would follow through with it, even if his family turns out to be eligible, he said.

He’s 65, and in no way eager to move, he said.

“When I bought this home, I didn’t plan on moving ever,” he said.

He wanted to leave it to his children, he said.

But those children know the property’s flooding history, and aren’t interested in coming back to live there — even though it’s a nice enough house on a nice property in a nice neighborhood, Folmar said.

Meanwhile, he has no choice but to be vulnerable to the elements, while protecting himself the best he can.

Last summer, he installed a $3,300 steel door in his basement.

It opens out, so that it can resist the pressure of the four feet of water that sometimes rises in his yard.

The door hasn’t been tested yet, but it’s inevitable that it will be, he said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.