REJECTS STOPGAPS

"Yes, we knew the ditch was there," they say, "but we never thought anything about it," or "Well, the real estate salesman told us plans were on the books to pipe the ditch or rip-rap its banks.”

Doing something "now" in each individual case just isn't the answer-nor possible, says Peter F. Mattei, executive director of the metropolitan sewer district.

"Stopgap measures won't work," he says, adding that the metropolitan sewer district will only resort to piecemeal solutions where someone's property is in imminent danger of destruction.

Piecemeal sewer projects merely shift the problem elsewhere, Mr. Mattei says. And to do a thorough, complete job in any of the dozens of areas facing the problem requires money.

Angry, distraught homeowners, crying for relief, in most instances profess a willingness to pay substantial amounts to have the job done.

Generally, they aren't aware of the actual costs.

First of all, to do most of the jobs would cost more than the people in immediate need of them could afford.

Aware of this, the metropolitan sewer district has in the past attempted to operate on a watershed basis, with everybody sharing the cost whose property drains water into the storm water ditches.

SEE NO BENEFITS

Invariably, this brings groans of anguish from people on high ground whose homes appear far removed from the eroding ditches and who can see no benefit to themselves.

These people fall into two classes-those who merely know that the water drains away from their property naturally and aren't worried, and those who. moving into their homes after creation of the metropolitan sewer district, have storm water sewers in their streets.

"We paid for storm sewers in the price of our homes," they claim. Few of them care where the water goes after it enters the nearest catch basin.

The watershed type of financing was tried in such subdistricts as Fountain Creek in Florissant and in South Overland.

Opponents cried "foul," and, in the Fountain Creek district, organized into "Opposition Fountain Creek, Inc.," and filed suit to block metropolitan sewer district.

In some instances, even those people most immediately threatened by erosion withdrew their support of a storm drainage program, Mr. Kaiser said.

Rebuffed by the Fountain Creek suit and strong opposition in the South Overland area, metropolitan sewer district temporarily tabled its plans for subdistricts and began seeking other means of financing such projects. It set up a citizens' advisory committee to study the problem.

One solution considered was a prorated billing system with those deriving the greatest benefit paying the most.

Another solution is the method put into effect just this month to rescue the Fountain Creek project.

This solution establishes a flat tax of 20 cents per $100 assessed valuation which is expected to yield $60,000 this year to begin at least emergency alleviation of the problem.

The tax seems to have gained tentative approval of opponents. If it proves effective metropolitan sewer district officials say, it may be applied elsewhere. Mr. Kaiser says the direct-tax method may open the way for popular acceptance of a general obligation bond issue paid on a yearly tax basis.

BOND LIMITATIONS

However, bond issues aren't the answer in all cases, either.

Metropolitan sewer district can only float a bond issue up to 5 percent of the assessed valuation of the area to be benefited. In some areas, the maximum amount of bonds have already been floated for sanitary sewers.

There are other problems involved, Mr. Mattei says.

One of them is the number of old, narrow bridges which constrict the flow of many creeks and drainage ditches.

Metropolitan sanitary district feels that if municipal, county, and State agencies having jurisdiction over these bridges would widen them, a part of the problem would be alleviated.

Another problem faced by metropolitan sewer district is the lack of contour maps upon which to base a long-range storm sewer study.

To solve this, metropolitan sewer district has applied for Federal urban renewal funds from the Housing and Home Finance Agency to make an engineering study of the entire area, charting every creek and ditch and topographical feature.

The Housing and Home Finance Agency's regional office in Fort Worth has recommended favorable action to Washington. If approved, the grant would provide half of the approximately $320,000 thought necessary for such a study. "This would be the first money ever obtained in Missouri for this type of study," Mr. Kaiser says. "The study is important in showing us where flooding is most likely to happen and where we need to take steps to prevent further soil erosion."

Erosion is the biggest problem. Attendant problems for dwellers beside ditches are odor, mosquitoes and danger to young children posed by standing pools or swirling floodwater and quagmires of mud.

Some homeowners have tried their own stopgap measures. They have thrown rocks, bed springs, and railroad ties on the ditch banks in stop erosion.

Invariably these are washed away or undermined by racing storm water. They are a mistake in any case, Mr. Mattei says. Railroad ties and other obstructions merely float downstream to tend to clog up the ditch elsewhere.

RIPRAP METHOD

He admits that riprapping the eroding banks with large rocks can be helpful if properly done and says metropolitan sewer district will advise homeowners on the proper methods to accomplish this.

Aside from such temporary steps, metropolitan sewer district will await a solution to the storm-water problem through the proposed study with Federal funds and the discovery of an equitable method of financing storm-water projects, Dr. Mattei adds.

"People will not obtain relief," he says, "until they know the tremendous costs and are willing to meet them.

"Our entire operating budget of about $3 million would not be adequate to finance the Fountain Creek project."

The metropolitan sewer district, he says, inherited a bad situation and cannot solve all the problems at once that have been dumped upon it.

"Prior to metropolitan sewer district there was no storm-water control in St. Louis County," he points out, "and builders could and did build without regard for ensuing problems.

The first problem for metropolitan sewer district was providing sanitary facilities, the agency's director pointed out. He adds that this is now well under control.

Mr. Kaiser saw hope in the future.

"Where we were hopeless a year or two ago," he says, "the thinking is shifting. The complexion of the general attitude is changing. Our biggest job now is to educate the people to the need for storm sewers.'

As an indication of this changing attitude, Mr. Kaiser cites the Grasso Lane subdistrict in Affton and in the Broadway-Ripa area in Lemay where property owners petitioned metropolitan sewer district to correct flooding conditions even on the tax-bill assessment method.

[From Globe-Democrat, May 25-26, 1963]

AREA STORM WATER

PROBLEM

STAGGERING-METROPOLITAN

SEWER DISTRICT

ESTIMATES COST OF FLASH-FLOOD CONTROL AT BILLION DOLLARS

(By Richard B. Ramage, Globe-Democrat Staff Writer)

If St. Louis residents paid as much in taxes for streets as they do to handle local floodwater, most automobiles would get no further than the foot of driveways.

In a growing urban area, new homes aggravate floodwater problems just as more cars complicate traffic jams. Every time an acre of grassy land is covered with homes, the water runoff problem is tripled and new ditches gnash their way to a low point where water forms pools.

Similar lack of consideration for streets would result in traffic jams on muddy lanes instead of our express highways.

Even where storm-water sewers are now installed, they are usually incapable of handling present drainage. St. Louis and such suburban communities as University City, Clayton, Richmond Heights, and Pine Lawn have combination sewers which carry both sanitary sewage and storm-water.

When heavy rains start pouring into these pipes, some of them more than 100 years old, there is quick proof you can't put a quart in a pint. The sewers back water into basements or streets, or simply explode from the immense water pressure. Cars would have similar problems on 1920 streets.

MUST HAVE HELP

These old sewers are part of the problem inherited by Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, now responsible for storm-water drainage in this area.

Peter F. Mattei, metropolitan sewer district executive director, says the problem is "so big and costly it is beyond comprehension to tackle alone."

He says it could cost up to a billion dollars to complete the network of pipes and creeks needed to carry away storm or floodwaters.

Outside of a few jobs done during the WPA days, such as River des Peres, none of the large creeks in the area can adequately handle floodwaters. Even River des Peres often has trouble.

Mr. Mattei admits he doesn't know where the billion dollars can be found. He won't recommend Federal aid, although 90 percent of some highway costs are paid by the Federal Government, but he is trying to persuade the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to handle some of the big problems such as Coldwater Creek.

Coldwater Creek handles water at a rate of 28,800 cubic feet per second during an average rain. During the same rain, the Meramec River flows at 80,000 feet per second.

Mr. Mattei says initial contacts have been made with the corps, based on the premise that such large creeks are in the corps' jurisdiction.

Those who do look to the Federal Government for financial aid back such bills as one introduced by U.S. Representative Henry S. Reuss, Wisconsin Democrat. He wants to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act so it will, for the first time, provide Federal funds for storm-water sewers.

If Mr. Reuss' bill is approved, the Government would pay up to 30 percent of the cost of storm-water drainage projects with funds coming from an annual $100 million appropriation. Missouri's Senator Edward V. Long is one of the bill's sponsors.

Mr. Mattei, in sympathy with the heavy tax burdens of homeowners, has a dream solution which he ruefully admits is only remotely possible.

MATTEI PROPOSAL

His dream is the acceptance by residents that sewers are a utility, just as gas, light, and water. Such acceptance could mean residents would pay a just and reasonable monthly fee to finance storm sewer works.

Mr. Mattei won't discuss figures, but a $4 average monthly fee-with owners of small homes paying less and industry paying more-illustrates how funds could be raised.

The $4 charge would raise just under $25 million annually and, in the 40 years it is expected to take to complete the storm water network, would provide the billion dollars. This money would pay for work varying from enclosing ditches which now wash away backyards to stabilizing creeks which carry the water to rivers.

MSD's present revenue system, a 4-cent ad valorem tax and an annual sewer charge, provides $3,500,000 annually and all this is needed for present operations and maintenance within the 230 square miles in the district."

The average small homeowner in the district pays about $6 annually in taxes and service charges and this total won't go far when a storm water ditch in a backyard must be replaced with pipe, he explains.

A 60-inch diameter pipe, which costs about $60 a foot to buy and install, is needed for the average backyard ditch. If two neighbors with 100-foot-wide lots joined forces to do the job, it would cost each about $3000.

At $6 annually, it would take 500 years to pay for the job.

Under the present MSD charter, each person who uses an improvement must pay equally for it, regardless of its distance from his property.

If work is done on a piecemeal basis, a man living at the foot of a creek would pay for only the project at the foot of the creek. But, the property owner at the top of the creek would pay for each project on the creek since his drainage water uses them all.

This multiple taxation could be eliminated if all work is done on a watershed basis as MSD hopes to do. With all work part of one project, there would be but one tax levy.

SLIDING SCALE

For a more equitable tax, some MSD officials foresee a possible charter amend ment which would allow tax levies to be set up on a sliding scale based on the distance of property from improvements.

This could mean a person living directly on a ditch, and thereby the person most benefiting from its improvement, might pay 150 percent of the average tax rate, while the person living several blocks away would pay 50 percent because his drainage water also eventually uses the improvement.

Mr. Mattei feels there are special problem areas within MSD-such as the Broadway-Ripa areas-where an immediate answer must be found by the district.

Some efforts by MSD have been slowed by court action, but the residents of the Fountain Creek and Grasso lane areas are cooperating and progress is being made.

A long-range plan for all of MSD is now being studied through a $218.000 Federal grant. The plan calls for a network of storm water sewers, to be completed on a watershed basis and laid out much as a street system.

Draining water would go into lateral pipes (side streets), on to trunk pipes (arterial roads), and then into big floodway reservation lines or creeks (express highways). The floodways carry the water to the rivers-the Nation's turnpikes for water.

These pipes and paved creeks must be large enough to handle heavy rain and its subsequent runoff.

BASIC WATERSHEDS

As the first step in planning this gigantic project, all the area within MSD has been divided into 11 basic watersheds and assigned to engineering firms for study reports. The 11 watersheds are:

Coldwater Creek, Watkins Creek, Maline Creek, Wellston Branch of River des Peres, University City Branch of River des Peres, city portion of River des Peres, Deer Creek-Black Creek, Two Mile Creek, Sugar Creek, Gravois Creek. and an area covering the city along the Mississippi River and extending into the Normandy-Northwood area.

Information from the study will be used to determine where the creeks and ditches should be located and how much right-of-way is needed, the size and design of the artifical creekbeds, and a rough estimate of costs, Mr. Mattei says.

MSD hopes to pass legislation later establishing the floodway reservation lines, which will be used straighten and improve creekbeds; eventually purchase the land for the floodways, and then start actual work by moving creeks into their new boundaries.

WORK UPSTREAM

While no timetable has been set for the project, a first concern will be to buy floodway lines while most of them are still in undeveloped land.

"It's obviously cheaper to buy undeveloped land than houses and shopping centers," Mr. Mattei points out.

Construction should start at the mouth of the big creeks, where the water dumps into the rivers, and then work upstream, Mr. Mattei says.

Starting work at the top of streams only moves problems downstream, because when rushing storm water reaches the end of an improved section it dumps into the old, crooked dirt ditch, digging holes in the bottom and washing out banks.

When all is said and done about the water problem, it filters down to finding money. Just as 1920 streets can't handle the modern and numerous automobiles, so the old or nonexistent storm water sewers can't handle the increased volume of storm water pouring off the increasing acres being covered with concrete and homes.

Senator MUSKIE. What is the source of your revenues now?

Mr. MATTEI. I am almost ashamed to tell you. We charge $4 a year on the assessed valuation-4 cents per hundred, I am sorry-on the assessed valuation and $4 per year sewer service charge. On the averhome within our boundaries, it runs around $6 a year-50 cents a month.

Senator MUSKIE. Do you collect it?

Mr. MATTEI. Yes; we have our own collection agency, our own IBM machines; we do our own collection.

Senator NELSON. Is it separate from the property tax bill?

Mr. MATTEI. No; the 4 cents per hundred is collected for us by both the city and the county by the assessor and the collector. The assessor assesses and puts it against the property and the collector collects it. For this, they charge one-half of 1 percent. Frankly, we could not do it for that small amount. But the $4 per house we collect ourselves. We have our own billing department, our own collectors. We file our own liens. We let them go for 3 years. At the 3-year level, we then file a lien against the piece of property. The reason we really do that is so that if the property is every transferred, we can get our money. If it is ever sold or any transaction is ever made, we can then get our money.

Senator BAYH. Is not there some way you can bring this story home to the local citizens, put it on a use basis? It seems to me you are going to have to hit that, if you can raise the money on the property tax. I think this is quite a burden to ask the Federal Government to take. If these people are using these sewers, they could dig down in their jeans a little for it.

Mr. MATTEI. Four years ago we went to an $8 per year charge. No indictment against the newspapers, but they chopped us up in little pieces in the editorials. They ran them steadily for weeks on how we were costing the people so much more money to operate and maintain the sewers and do these various things we have to do than was necessary before.

What they didn't tell was that before it was wholly in the assessed valuation. I speak quite often, at least 2 or 3 nights a week, giving talks, and our area is just not ready to accept sewers as a utility or a monthly charge or a quarterly charge or something like that. We are working toward that end and this article that I will send you says in there it is my dream to make such a charge, and it is.

Senator BAYH. It seems to me that one of your major problems, then, is creating awareness of the seriousness of the problem in the minds of the individual citizens as well as newspapers.

You say you work very closely with the Federal enforcement agenies. Would it be of assistance to you in creating awareness of the seriousness of the problems if the Federal authority would really lower the boom and let it be known publicly that this is something that has to stop? What has been done to date?