BOARDMAN — Flooding problems in the township may soon be a thing of the past.

That is the objective of a $47 million federally funded project expected to be completed within the next three to five years.

Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a $3 million award to Boardman for Phase 1 funding. The award allows the township to begin planning for the larger project, which will be funded by $35.83 million from FEMA’s Flood Mitigation Assistance program. The ABC Stormwater District will produce $11 million to $12 million in matching funds on Boardman’s behalf.

The project aims to eliminate flooding in central Boardman, along and around Cranberry Run Creek and Boardman Plaza, mainly by installing a conduit that will run north along Glenwood Avenue and carry storm water to detention basins behind the plaza.

“This project represents the first time a township was awarded a Flood Mitigation Assistance grant in Ohio, and one of the largest projects you’ll see in a community in Mahoning County for infrastructure,” said Jason Loree, Boardman Township Administrator and Boardman’s representative on the ABC district board. “We’re going to correct a problem that has been around since the development of Boardman Plaza and the neighborhoods north of the plaza.”

Loree said the conduit will tap into a section of Cranberry Run that occupies an Ohio Edison easement, improving and increasing the floodplain there, diverting and slowing the water on its way to Mill Creek Park without negatively impacting other areas around the stream.

“By bringing the water down Glenwood on its own path and diverting it from the neighborhoods, we’re going to give the neighborhoods extra capacity, and it will impact the businesses and residential homes in that area,” he said. “We’re slowing it down, creating less erosion, putting naturalized areas in that weren’t there before. It’s a monumental task and would have taken us 50 to 60 years to try to accomplish, and now we’re doing it in a matter of three to five years.”

The project has several parts:

The first is installing the conduit along Glenwood Avenue, followed by improvements to the stream section within the Ohio Edison Easement — which ultimately lets out at West Boulevard on its way to Mill Creek Park — including floodplain mitigation and expansion. Part two includes installing green space at the Boardman Plaza, around the former Rite-Aid. The next part includes installing detention basins behind the plaza, taking down some apartment complexes behind Save-A-Lot for more detention space, and likely installing green space or underground detention in the plaza parking lot. The final component involves improvements to a storm sewer and culvert in the Rockdale area.

Loree said that because Rockdale is separate from the main scope of the project, it likely will be completed at the same time as the work around the plaza.

He also said the township will work with Mahoning County to complete the conduit work along Glenwood at the same time as a major renovation to that road is underway.

County Engineer Patrick Ginetti’s office announced in September a $9 million project to restripe the road from Midlothian Boulevard to Western Reserve Road and install a roundabout at Wildwood Drive.

“We’ve talked to Pat Ginnetti and his staff, and they understand what we’re doing; they know it’s a giant project, and also understand that it would be wasteful not to try and work this out together,” Loree said. “So we’re very grateful they’re with us on this.”

A HISTORIC PROBLEM

According to a concept summary the township submitted to FEMA, the trouble dates back to the 1940s and 1950s when the plaza and the homes around Cranberry Run were constructed with no stormwater detention. Houses were built immediately adjacent to or directly on top of the streams, which were either channelized with block walls or completely piped.

As the county population expanded and many of Youngstown’s steel mill workers made Boardman their home, U.S. Route 224 was widened from two lanes to six, again with no stormwater detention plans in place, and the same for the construction of the plaza and Southern Park Mall.

The houses and buildings also were constructed before regulations prohibited tying in footer drains with sanitary systems.

“The floor drain in your basement is also attached to the foundational drains below the house. 80% of the homes in Boardman are built like that and most of the homes in Youngstown and Austintown,” Loree said. “Only newer developments require those to be separated.”

Loree said heavy rains are compounded by this problem.

“Rainwater gets into the sanitary system through the many connections that exist there,” he said. “The sanitary system can’t handle it. When you see the water rising, you know it’s getting into the sanitary system.”

That means the water that floods streets and homes is not just rain water.

In the decades since the township expanded around the watershed, the streams have failed to keep up with the excess runoff and blockages caused by erosion make the flooding worse.

Increasingly extreme weather events have only exacerbated the problem in recent years. Since 2018, the township has endured three 500-year to 1,000-year storms.

In August 2018, a 1,000-year storm dropped 4.37 inches in three hours. In May 2019, a 500-year storm dropped 3.8 inches in three hours, and in September 2022, another 1,000-year storm poured 4.2 inches in three hours.

The case study said the last one led to a hot line that received more than 350 complaints.

But Loree said the problems are not new. There are reports of Boardman Plaza flooding in the 1950s not long after it was built, and the problems only grew worse.

Loree said he hopes solving the problem will help stabilize the local economy and the neighborhoods by giving business owners and homeowners comfort and confidence.

“What we’re doing here will help stabilize the plaza and let those tenants know ‘hey, we’re doing everything we can to stop future flooding events from clobbering your business,'” he said.

Loree said it should relieve property owners from regularly filing high-dollar insurance claims for flood damage.

PROVING IT WORKS

Loree said the project has been informed by more than just an historic understanding and practical observation of the problem.

“We had a model done for proof of concept, and submitted that to FEMA through the state, to show them: ‘we need a lot of money but this will work,'” he said.

Loree said that without the district, the grant — and the project — never would have happened.

The ABC storm water district formed in 2009 but almost immediately its efforts were halted.

“A court case delayed our ability to move forward,” Loree said. “There was a legal challenge as to whether stormwater districts could actually exist, and it went all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court.”

The case was settled in 2018, and the district was able to begin collecting membership fees and seeking funding for projects.

“It’s funny to be able to sit here and think back to when we first started the stormwater district, and then we’ve had all those flooding events, and how far we’ve come, as a tiny little district working with the township,” he said. “It goes to show that with good data and good policy, you can really get some work done.”

And the district has gotten work done.

“We started with fixing infrastructure that was already there, and we’re going to have to do that until the end of time,” he said. “We replaced culverts, added some detention basins, we’ve taken down some homes within the floodplain, and we’ve been very methodical in terms of trying to spend dollars wisely at the district level.”

At the same time, though, ABC laid the groundwork to pursue larger grants for major projects like this one, working with the Army Corps of Engineers, conducting stream studies, analyzing rain events by partnering with weather stations to collect data, and even studied the area’s elevation through a LIDAR fly over of Boardman, plotting contours at the 3-inch mark.

“That helped us construct models to apply for grants, because we had good data based on water flow, rain events, and elevations. We then plug that into hydrology modeling software, and we go ahead and plug in our proposed solutions, and it gives us proof of concept,” Loree said. “Rather than just digging a hole and hoping it works, we wanted to be sure that if we’re going to be spending the money on changing and adding infrastructure, it was going to be impactful.”

Working with CT Consultants, some county offices, the township, and the three part-time employees at the district, ABC – through the township, as the entity that has jurisdiction to submit the grant application – was able to submit the proposal to the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.

The OEMA approved the project and sent it on to FEMA for federal consideration.

Loree said Gov. Mike DeWine’s office has expressed specific interest in the project, and the ABC and Boardman have been in direct contact with Ohio EMA Director Sima Merick and FEMA Chicago Regional Director Thomas Sivak as well.

“I expect a lot of eyes on this project,” Loree said. “I hope we will prove that we can do the work we said we are going to do, and that the state and federal agencies will see that we are a good partner to work with, and they will want to support us more.”

Loree said the project should be completed within five years. He said that once the planning phase is completed, the township will begin hosting public forums to discuss the project, with the first one expected next year.

“We intend to be very open on this and try to get as much feedback as possible,” he said. “One of the components of the grant is public participation, and we want to make sure we comply.”