Hickory Ridge flood control project underway

MERRILLVILLE

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Merrillville Stormwater Management Board President Bud Crist, from left, Burke Engineering Water Resources Vice President Darren Olson, Burke Engineering Construction Engineer Matt Scarsella and Merrillville’s Stormwater Management Executive Director Matt Lake chat before a groundbreaking ceremony behind The Ridge apartment complex Thursday. Michelle L. Quinn/Post-Tribune

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By Michelle L. Quinn For Post-Tribune

Some 400 residents in and around the former Hickory Ridge apartment complex are getting 2.73 million gallons of water storage — and lower flood insurance bills — via a partnership between the town of Merrillville and Little Calumet River Basin Development Commission.

The 8.4-acre trench to the west of The Ridge apartments, on 57th and Hayes Street, has been under construction for several months and is expected to be completed within a month or so, Merrillville Stormwater Utility Executive Director Matt Lake said Thursday during an on-site groundbreaking ceremony. The next time they’re out on the scene, they may need to hold a ribbon cutting, he joked.

“The purpose of this project is to provide a substantially higher level of flood control,” Lake said. “This project provides about 2.73 million gallons of storage as well as improved conveyances and rehabilitation of a pump system, all combined to assist this area.”

The project has been many years in the making — 17 years, to be exact, Lake said. In September 2008, the trajectory of flood mitigation changed in two days when nine inches of rain deluged Northwest Indiana.

“Stormwater mitigation was a relatively new thing, and we weren’t required to do a lot of things,” he said. “(After that storm) we really started taking flood control much more seriously.”

The town started acquiring the easements it needed for The Ridge project — never an easy, short task, Lake and Burke Engineering Vice President of Water Resources Darren Olson agreed — and in 2014, it created a Stormwater Master Plan with about $20 million worth of mitigation projects that the town has been checking off one by one, Lake said. The Ridge project, at $2.1 million, is one of the bigger ones.

“Everyone does stormwater master plans now; having a road map, especially for big-dollar projects, is important,” Lake said.

When completed, the project will have replaced all the underground pipes with bigger ones as well as place the pump and lift station mostly underground, Lake and Olson said. Project contractor Dyer Construction will the redo the road and install sidewalks along the length of the project.

While keeping water out of residents’ basements — and in the case of The Ridge tenants, their whole apartments — is the big goal, helping them keep their flood insurance is a bonus, Lake said.

Projects like the new pump system give that area of Merrillville a lower rating on the National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System, which means lower flood insurance rates.

Lake credited the Merrillville Town Council and Stormwater Board for “making the tough decisions but gave special thanks to the Little Calumet River Basin Development Commission, which gave the town $932,168 in cost-share dollars for the project. The rest of it, he said, was paid for purely through town stormwater fees.

“We didn’t bond out at all for this — in fact, our bonds are all paid off,” he said.

Council President Rick Bella, D-5, said he was happy to see it’s almost finished and that he supports any project that benefits residents.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.