A landowner says a subdivision is adding to flooding problems in East Fort Worth.
Julie Amendola is the owner of the Trinity River Farm and Equestrian Center. The location, along Randol Mill Road, has been there for about 14 years.
Amendola said they have experienced flooding from the Trinity River in the past, but street flooding has become a problem in recent years when heavy rain hits in a short period of time.
Rainwater goes into a detention pond and trickles down to bar ditches on Randol Mill Road, Amendola said.
“The bar ditches can’t contain the amount of water coming off, so it’s causing flash floods all the way up and down Randol Mill Road and particularly at my location,” she said. “It causes a great deal of erosion throughout the property. We’ve got huge channels in our parking area, in our driveway. I’ve got animals that have freestanding water. It virtually will shut down our business at different times.”
Following heavy rainfall Thursday morning, a flash flood occurred around 6:30 a.m. and left Kurt Klewin stuck in water on Randol Mill Road as he drove through before work.
“I mean, it came up to about at least right here,” Klewin said, gesturing to the top of his tires. “[It] just swept and shut the whole car off.”
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Trinity Oaks is the subdivision is question and was developed by DR Horton, according to Greg Simmons, assistant director of the Fort Worth Transportation and Public Works Department.
He noted the department has heard of these concerns in the past, but told NBC 5, the general area is in a floodplain. DR Horton met the city’s drainage standards based on recommendations developed by the North Central Texas Council of Governments, Simmons said.
“The detention pond is the way that slows the water down and basically, the idea is that you try to slow the water down so it mimics the pre-developed run off conditions,” he said. “What happened recently, has been happening for decades. We’ve got records going back for a long time showing there historically have been road flooding and those sorts of things.”
As of right now, Simmons said the city was maintaining the bar ditch system to the best of their ability.
“There isn’t really anything that can be done in terms of major improvements to that system. You don’t have enough right-of-way to work with, you don’t have enough slope to get the water where it needs to go,” he said. “To fix the problem, or just radically improve it, would be a massive project. We got resource constraints. We have to take the resources we use for the highest priority areas that pose the greatest risk to the greatest number of people, particularly life safety issues.”
From a priority standpoint, they could not justify this kind of project, Simmons said.
However, Amendola said the need goes beyond landowners like her.
“I realize I’m a single landowner, but I’m doing this to try to benefit a very large population,” Amendola said.
Multiple emails to DR Horton requesting additional comment were not returned.
