School, city discuss plans for drainage

The Glencoe-Silver Lake School Board heard a plan for drainage improvement from Glencoe City Administrator Mark Larson and a Short Elliot Hendrickson (SEH) engineer.
The plan would address the flooding problems that have occurred around the city and especially around the high school and junior high school after large rainfalls in 2013 and 2014.
The area around the school currently has ponds designed to collect excessive water and avoid flooding. These ponds did work successfully by collecting the water in the last two years, but they do not have an outlet for the water by the school. Larson said the water does not drain out of the ponds fast enough.  
The proposed plan would drain this water from the ponds through an underground pipe to a ditch under Highway 212 Frontage Road. The 30-inch diameter pipe would connect with original piping at the northeast corner of the school and follow 16th Street past Morningside Avenue. The pipe would run under the railroad tracks and be 10-12 feet underground.
The plan could be laid out in one of two ways. One option has the pipe turning off towards 14th Street while the other remains a straight shot on 16th. Larson said remaining on 16th Street would save pipe.
The potential cost for the pipe project would be $700,000 to $800,000.

For more, see the Aug. 12 print edition of The Chronicle.