You could forgive Brookfield resident James Giannini for thinking someone was playing an April Fool’s joke on him. Following a rain storm Saturday night that deluged the western suburbs, he wasn’t spending Sunday morning pumping out his garage. There was a three-inch deep, 20-yard long pool of water that covered the entire width of the east-west alley just steps away from his garage door. But that’s progress.
Just a few weeks earlier the scene was entirely different. Following a drenching rain, Giannini’s garage floor was completely submerged in water. While this wasn’t necessarily uncommon following a good rain, it was worse than usual. Last spring, Giannini, a plumber by trade, dug a pit in his garage and hooked up a sump pump, to pump rain water out of his garage and back into the gravel alley that runs both behind and alongside his garage in the 3800 block of Park Avenue.
There was so much water this time around, that Giannini had to put a 1.5-inch hose onto his pump and drain the water into his catch basin. The pump ran for eight hours straight. Even after pumping an estimated 21,000 gallons of water from his garage (as he pumped water, the rest of the water in the alley drained toward his house), he still had over four inches of water.
His garage’s concrete slab was cracked in several places and was no longer even stable. The shattered pieces give way under foot.
“I called my insurance company, and they told me they couldn’t do anything,” Giannini said. “I don’t live in a flood plain and I don’t have flood insurance.”
But as many, many people in Brookfield can tell you, while they may not officially live in a flood plain, they certainly face floods in their alleys. For whatever reason, unlike most surrounding suburbs, Brookfield never got around to paving its alleys in any comprehensive way.
Years ago the alleys were covered with black cinders. Over time, the village switched to using crushed quarry stone, grading it every once in a while and trying to keep up with the damage to the alleys caused by an ever growing number of cars and garbage trucks that traverse the alleys constantly.
After formally complaining about his situation at a recent Brookfield village board meeting, Giannini got some relief. Last week, a crew of three Public Works employees and three vehicles-a front-end loader, a dumptruck and a grader-excavated about 100 feet of alley alongside Giannini’s home. The job took six hours.
It’s an effort that’s ultimately futile, according Al Kitzer, the Public Works Department’s superintendent of operations.
“As far as I can remember, we can’t provide the proper drainage with grading and stone,” said Kitzer, who’s worked in the department for 31 years. “The basic idea of grading and stoning the alley is to make it driveable. To repitch or dig out every alley would take us forever to do.”
Even if the village could do that, the fix would only be temporary. In addition to more car traffic, the village has also increased the number of garbage trucks going through the alleys. Instead of one truck once a week, there are three big trucks to collect garbage, recycling and yard waste.
The heavy trucks, especially when the ground is wet, simply dig troughs in the gravel. With no storm sewers under the alleys, the water either pools in the giant troughs or empties into yards and garages, some of which are several inches lower than the alley grade, which is constantly getting higher with the addition of more gravel.
Homeowners over the years have tried ingenious solutions to the problem of garages flooding. Giannini, for example, wondered why his home’s previous created a 6-inch berm of river rock in front of the garage. He found out when it rained. According to Kitzer, one homeowner who doesn’t use his garage built a dam out of two-by-fours in front of his garage door to keep the flood waters out. Others have laid extra layers of asphalt in front of their garage doors.
The flooding is particularly a problem for older garages, which are often built lower than newer ones.
“Garages that are older were built when the surrounding area had garages at the same height or no garages at all,” said Kitzer. “It wasn’t a big priority to get drainage. Over the years, people built garages on the empty lots or raised them up. The water’s going to find the lowest point-sometimes in yards, or in some cases older garages at a lower height.”
And the only solution is an expensive one-paving the alleys.
“Paving is definitely the golden egg,” said Kitzer.
Yet few alleys in Brookfield are paved and few are slated for improvement in the next year or so. Despite announcing last year that the village would seek to pave at least 10 alleys per year, it’s been tough to get residents to sign on the cost-sharing dotted line.
Last year, the village did move forward with nine alleys (four were paved last year; the remainder will be paved in 2007). But in 2007, there’s been more resistance. Out of eight petitions handled by the village board’s infrastructure committee this spring, just two are moving ahead.
“It all comes down to what people want to pay for,” said Village Manager Riccardo Ginex. “We’ve got one or two new petitions this year, but now that we’re this far into the year, they’ll have to wait until next year.”
In order to get an alley paved in Brookfield, residents and officials go through a long process. First comes a petition seeking an initial look at what a new alley might cost residents. Before the infrastructure committee will even look at the petition, at least 51 percent of the property owners that front the alley need to vote for it.
Then comes a more detailed analysis of the project by the village engineer, who comes up with an estimated cost for the project, giving residents an idea of just what their share might be. The total cost for paving an alley can be $110,000 to $220,000. Depending on the width of a given lot, the cost to an individual property owner can be anywhere from $1,500 to $6,000 or more. That special assessment can be paid over a 10-year period.
Once the price tag comes in, many people start jumping off the bandwagon. The village’s policy in recent years has been to let the taxpayers decide for themselves if there’s enough support for an alley. If the vote is close or against paving the alley, the village board has typically decided to take a pass on creating the special assessment area.
As a result, the process of alley paving in Brookfield has moved very slowly. The alley between the 4200 blocks of Arthur and Maple avenues has been plagued by floods. After last weekend’s rain, the alley was dotted with large pools of water, some three and four inches deep.
This summer that will change, when that alley is finally paved.
“For years we’ve been talking about getting a new alley,” said Scott Beagles, who for the past 14 years has lived in two houses that back up to the alley. He’ll be paying $600 a year for the next 10 years for the alley. While that’s OK with him, he knows there are senior citizens on the block who aren’t happy about the new assessment.
But after decent rains, the alley is just about impassable on foot, and it’s impossible to keep cars clean.
“If you have a nice vehicle and you want to keep it clean, you have to think everyday, ‘Do I want to take this vehicle out of the garage?'” Beagles said. “It’s probably on your mind more than you think, subconsciously.”
It was on Tom Campbell’s mind constantly. The owner of at least one classic car and some motorcycles, Campbell has lived in the 3300 block of Elm Avenue for 36 years. Two years ago, he successfully lobbied neighbors on his block and the 3300 block of Park Avenue to pave the alley.
“You couldn’t wash the car in the alley,” said Campbell. “It held water for a week sometimes.”
Last Sunday morning, he was doing something that wouldn’t have crossed Beagles’ mind. Campbell was standing in the middle of the alley, talking with his neighbors, the Crowleys, chit-chatting. The concrete alley was completely dry from one end of the block to the other.
“It’s so clean now,” said Cathy Crowley. “It’s so much better.”
Giannini said he’s probably going to start a petition drive going on his block to pave his alley, an offset T-shaped alley that is lined with a smattering of single-family homes, duplexes and multi-family buildings. He’s unsure if his neighbors will think it’s a popular idea.
In the meantime, the village will continue to address alley maintenance issues the way they always have, with manpower hours, money spent on gravel and vehicles like the village’s grader.
“Eventually to solve the problem we’re going to have to spend money [for paving] at some point,” said Public Works Director William Heider, who said he made sure his Brookfield home had a driveway when he was looking to buy, so he wouldn’t have to drive through the unpaved alley.
“It’s just going to get more and more expensive. The citizens have to say how important this is to us.”