Creekside Trail is a 1960s-vintage residential subdivision. A single storm sewer drains the street to the Aurora Branch of the Chagrin River. Over the years, several residents have experienced water flooding in their basements during severe rainfall events. The City of Solon, Ohio, hired B&N to study these areas and develop an improvement plan to alleviate the flooding issues at 21 residences.
Questionnaires were sent to the residents to understand each house's condition, with 70% of the questionnaires providing answers. This helped to define the situation and verify the study findings.
To evaluate solutions, HY-8 software was used to model the culvert that the storm sewer runs through and establish the tailwater condition for the sewer outlet. StormCAD was used to analyze the existing and proposed storm sewer conditions.
Lowering the storm sewer profile was deemed the most appropriate solution. The depth needed to satisfy the project's hydraulic requirements conflicted with the existing sanitary sewer. Fortunately, the area has plenty of fall, which allowed the storm sewer to be built slightly lower than the sanitary sewer to avoid conflicts. This solution will reduce the frequency and severity of the backups in the basements.