Mundelein Residents Urge Leaders To Prevent The Next Big Flood
(CBS) -- Flooding frustrations come to a boiling point in suburban Mundelein. Residents say the village isn't doing enough when it comes to managing major storm events.
CBS 2's Charlie De Mar reports.
Mundelein was hit with record rain -- about 6 inches in just 7 hours a couple weeks ago -- but residents say larger infrastructure improvements are needed to prevent flooding.
Monday, the streets of the Lake County, Illinois community were lined with water-logged possessions -- furniture, bags of garbage and years of musical memories -- almost two weeks after the heavy rains
"It's just a matter of waiting for the next one to come," says resident Chris Fischer, whose basement was flooded.
Village leaders say about 6 inches came down in just 7 hours; roughly 13 days of sewage water was treated in just two days. They consider it a 200-year rain event.
But resident Kurt Link complains: "This is a daily event every time it rains."
He spoke at a village meeting Monday, saying water backs up every time there is substantial rain.
The village's public works engineer, Adam Boeche, says the storm drainage system -- or any system in the area -- just isn't built to handle the scale of rain they saw earlier this month. Now, they are trying to assess the damage caused by the storm.
"It wouldn't be right for us to move forward on a specific private property issue when it's just specific to that particular property. We want to make sure this a regional issue that's affecting multiple properties," Boeche said.
