Drainage headaches plague West Columbia neighborhoods

Outdated drainage is endangering homes during downpours in older West Columbia neighborhoods near the lower Saluda River.

Homeowners are pressing state transportation officials, Lexington County and City Hall to end flooding during storms that everyone agrees has worsened during the past decade.

Fed up, some homeowners are asking courts to order someone to deal with a situation all sides say has a multimillion-dollar price tag, since scores of homes are affected. Others are simply frustrated.

“We’re pulling our hair out trying to get something done,” said Joy Sullivan, who lives in the Westover Acres area. “No one wants to touch it.”

It’s the latest in a series of drainage problems across the 758-square-mile county.

State and county officials say correcting the problem in West Columbia isn’t their responsibility, even though drainage was designed and installed under their supervision as neighborhoods sprouted on hills along the river in the 1960s.

Those neighborhoods enabled West Columbia to expand from a former mill village along the nearby Congaree River.

Increasing drainage problems are an unforeseen result of stormwater runoff from steady growth, County Council Chairman Todd Cullum of Cayce said.

“What we have been left to deal with are a lot of issues like this,” he said.

County standards today ban some practices allowed then, such as putting homes within 100 feet of streams and running drainage lines under homes.

West Columbia inherited the drainage headaches as it annexed those neighborhoods, occasionally taking largely unsuccessful steps to alleviate the trouble.

“The steep topography in this area makes drainage particularly susceptible to high runoff in intense storms,” according to a report by Bill Bingham, an engineer hired by city officials to review the situation.

A babbling brook adjoining Margaret Jumper’s home in the Saluda River Estates area across from Riverbanks Zoo is becoming a nemesis instead of a scenic feature as it slowly erodes her yard and approaches her deck.

“We didn’t use to worry about things,” she said of the home she has lived in since 1974. “We sure do now.”

Problems intensified as city and county officials allowed more development around the neighborhood near I-26 and U.S. 378, their lawsuit says.

Ending problems at just one home in Saluda River Estates is estimated at $1 million, officials say in another lawsuit.

In one lawsuit, Charles and Beth Abercrombie describe their Westover Acres home as not habitable after 40 years due to a storm drain pipe underneath that is “grossly inadequate and in gross disrepair.”

State transportation officials have been told in a court order that the agency must deal with storm overflows onto a road that are eroding the lawn at the home, leaving a sinkhole next to the residence.

In responses to lawsuits, state and county officials contend homeowners “knowingly assume the risk” in buying homes at the bottom of hills, along streams and in low-lying locations likely to flood in heavy rain.

State, county and city officials also dispute claims their decisions contributed to the problems, blaming unnamed developers.

So far, there’s no interest among officials in a partnership to deal with the situation.

No push has emerged to buy homes in jeopardy and turn the sites into mini-parks. The county is doing that for up to 65 residences on the north side of Lake Murray damaged by floods after record rain in October 2015.

The drainage problems in West Columbia mirror those along Kinley Creek in the Irmo-St. Andrews area and in the Avenues neighborhood in Cayce.

No one has settled on a plan for drainage improvements. Steady development instead has focused attention on adding deputies, firefighters and emergency medical care as well as easing traffic congestion.

Tackling drainage may require a new tax that probably would be a difficult sell, Cullum said.

Some homeowners are skeptical that help will come.

Ruth Schneider is frustrated at what she sees as inaction and inattention to torrential rains slowly washing out her backyard and damaging her garage at the home in Westover Acres she has lived in for 18 years.

“I’m upset because I feel like no one cares,” she said.

This story was originally published January 22, 2017 at 6:54 PM with the headline "Drainage headaches plague West Columbia neighborhoods."