Roadwork, rain leaves home innundated with 'waves of mud'

Editor:

This ties in both with Barbara Seaborns June 11 column, Old-fashioned road-building, and Bob Cipperlys June 5 letter, County greets drainage questions with silence.

My family has lived on a dirt road, Berzelia Road, in Grovetown for more than 15 years, and we have heard for many years that it is going to be paved soon from our elected officials. ... Last year when we were asked to give up some of our frontage for the road, we agreed on the condition that they would replace the gardens I have there. ...

It wasnt until the establishment of an upper-scale neighborhood up the road and the construction of Grovetown Middle School, however, that there seemed to be any genuine interest in working on our road - and the first thing that our esteemed officials did was to put in a city water line along the road to service those other neighborhoods, moving our water meter closer to our fence in the process. This was about three months ago.

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Imagine my surprise when I came home that day to find the center of my frontage of dogwoods and azaleas pushed into an ugly mangled mass of brush, where it sits to this day. But willing to pardon the mess for progress, I said nothing.

It wasnt until the torrential spring rains that the true problems became apparent. Our not-so-overly bright county workers and engineers, for whom the idea that water flows downhill must seem as mysterious as the inner workings of a dwarf neutron star, had not only neglected to put a ditch to drain the water from the roadbed, but had also graded the roadbed the wrong way! Waves of mud and sand flowed down my driveway ..., choking my koi pond and lawn.

OK, Im a patient man. I hired a kid to the tune of $45 to fill in the newly aquired ruts and holes in the driveway, and then spent another $40 in straw to reduce the amount of mud tracked in the house, as well as for building berms across the drive so that this would not happen again. Then my wife contacted our Grovetown mayor for remediation of the source of the problem - the lack of a ditch and the improper grading of the road.

Well, they cut in a ditch - and piled the dirt into the road so that their new ditch was very well protected from stormwater run-off. The road slope was not corrected, and to add insult to injury, they erected a short section of silt fence by their water meter to protect their investment! ...

The weekend of June 7 was the final straw. Thunderstorms sent a river of mud flowing through my property. ...

The Grovetown mayor ... agreed that the road was improperly graded, ... and said he would see to it that the driveway was repaired so that this problem would not occur again.

A week later, they had regraded the road, and again in the wrong direction. My yard still is full of silt and mud, and the driveway unusable... . To make matters worse, I recently came home and found that the newly installed water meter was pouring tremendous quantities of water across the ground. When I called City Hall, I was first scolded for not reporting the problem earlier, then told that it would require someone having to work overtime to fix it. Well, they fixed it, all right - they sent a man who turned off the water, and it stayed that way for four days.

With this kind of service, mess, lack of response by county and city officials, the total disregard for their customers, and damage done, well, Im at a loss as to what to do.

Anyone know any good lawyers out there? Im looking for one. Right now.

Michael Hogue

Grovetown