MADISON, Wis. – Leaders from the Madison’s engineering division are launching a new blog to the showcase changes they’ve made to city infrastructure since severe flooding devastated Madison’s west side four years ago.
In August of 2018, flood water breached the homes and streets of Madison’s west side resulting in about 30 million dollars in public and private damage.
Engineering Division Spokesperson Hannah Mohelnitzky said they’ve taken a lot of measures to make sure the city is better prepared to manage stormwater and they want people to know what they’ve been up to.
“Since then work has not stopped for us,” she said. “It may seem like it kind of has quieted down since the storm but it’s only because we’ve been doing a lot of behind the scenes work.”
She said it’s why they’ve launched a new blog called ‘Since 2018’ to highlight the watershed research efforts, community outreach, and projects they’ve already completed or are still working on.
Each post will highlight one initiative. The first, already on the site, focuses on their 1.4 million dollar project on Waite Circle replacing a tunnel that was overdue for a larger and long term fix.
Mohelnitzky said since 2018, the city has dedicated more dollars to the engineering division, which means with a bigger budget they can fund long term solutions like their 7 million dollar fix for the greenway on McKenna Blvd.
“We dug the whole thing up,” She said. “We replaced the pipes underneath, we made sure that the conveyance and all the water moved through and that the pipes could handle the water.”
The project was completed in the fall of 2020 but now work is underway to replace the outdated pipes on University Ave. Mohelnitzky said that is slated to be completed sometime in 2023 or 2025.
She also said as severe storms become more frequent they’ve made updated stormwater ordinances. A future blog post is set to highlight the new rules.
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