BY ADAM ATKINSON
North Country This Week

POTSDAM — Several village residents who live along the path of the Crosstown Canal are dealing with flooded backyards.

Some of them came to the village board meeting on Feb. 21 to ask the village to do something to fix the problem.

Flooding along the path of the largely subterranean Crosstown Canal has been an issue the village has spent years trying to rectify, some might say with mixed success. The village has spent money on various studies and maintenance work on the structure over the last decade, however, the system which redirects ground water and storm run-off out of residential neighborhoods into the Raquette River has been a source of soggy complaints from many village residents over the years.

“So currently we have a lake in the backyard,” said Katie Deuel who lives on Pleasant Street. “At times, when it's not frozen, it's literally knee deep.”

“We’ve reached out to public works. We’ve asked them at various times to bring pumps over. That really hasn’t worked. That’s really a short term solution. What we are really looking for is a commitment from the village for a long term solution for what is at best of times a wetland and at worst of times a full-fledged lake that impacts multiple properties in the area,” Deuel said.

“Right now, we really are underwater on our property. Our backyards are completely unusable to varying degrees,” she said.

Deputy Mayor Steve Warr, who is filling in for Mayor Ron Tischler who was not in attendance, said the flooding problem originated 20 years ago when the state installed a holding pond behind the school bus garage with assurances that it would not affect the Crosstown Canal system. Warr said the water flow in the canal was tripled, but the state absolved themselves of any responsibility. He said the village in response has twice before installed 4-inch check valve drains at low spots that were experiencing flooding and the devices seem to have worked.

Warr was unsure if the drains would work to help the current problem without knowing the flooded properties, but suggested that Deuel contact Code Enforcement Officer Lisa Newby and ask her to bring something before the board.

Deuel said that she has spoken with the village administrator and public works already on the issue and has not received a lot of response to the problem.

Deuel was asked to supply addresses of the flooded properties to the board to move forward.

Heather Wheeler of Waverly Street said the flooding is reminiscent of similar inundation which soaked the neighborhood in 2010. Wheeler said the village had an outside organization study the issue. “Within a couple of years they had the information and I think they determined that it was the canal and that there was a lot of debris in the canal and some parts of the canal were not in working order,” Wheeler said. “This has been happening for quite a long time.”

“It got better for a few years. But in the past three years we’ve started having significant water again,” said Tracy Wannamaker of Pleasant Street.

“Last year the lake in the backyard lasted over two months,” she said. She showed the board a picture on her cell phone of the flooding.

“Also the past two years I’ve had water in my basement, which indicates that the level of the water is rising,” Wannamaker said.

Village Trustee Alexandra Wilke said the study done in 2010 was by the firm Environmental Design & Research, a Syracuse-based architecture and engineering firm. She said the study found that flooding was caused by structural problems with the canal and also storm run off from farms just outside the village. She said the study recommended that better storm water storage areas be constructed.

Wilke said she would forward the report to the board members. “I think we need to take another look and see what actions we can take,” she said.

“I’m here to express my concern about the growing water level in my backyard and in the middle of the block,” said Kevin Smith of Waverly Street.

“In the last two years it has become much worse with standing water three months out of the year, maybe four months out of the year, I would say,” said Smith. “And getting to the point where it's depriving us of much of the use of our tax-paid property.”

“I would just request that we begin the process again of alleviating the situation,” Smith said.