City worker removes wood blocking Town Branch flow

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City workers appeared at the Eleventh Street bridge across the Town Branch of the West Fork of the White River soon after sunrise Thursday and removed a piece of wood, probably a log but, from the end of the bridge, appearing to be close to railroad-tie size, that was lodged between a large sewer main and the underside of the bridge.

Don Hoodenpyle has been talking about the potential for blockage of the flow under the old bridge since the old sewer line was replaced by a larger one many months ago. The new, larger sewer line was put in under the bridge at 11th St. to facilitate sewage flow from the west portion of Aspen Ridge. Hoodenpyle urged the city to build a new, higher and longer bridge at the stream crossing before repaving the street, but that would have put a big dent in the city budget and the city doesn't require developers to pay an impact fee for streets.
The Town Branch flowed over the bridge Tuesday night and, of course, across Hoodenpyle's yard and Larry Smith's yard south of 11th. The amount of rain in the neighborhood was measured at 1 inch by a neighbor; but it could have been greater in the watershed to the north.
The Town Branch forms from water falling on the eastern portion of Markham HiIl (College Branch is the new name given to the stream coming from there by the city sometime in the past decade) and from water flowing from near Cleveland Street between Razorback Road and Garland Avenue and UNDER the Reynolds Razorback Stadium (Mullins Creek is the name recently attached to this stream) and other athletic facilities and from water flowing off the main campus on the hill to the east as well as from the Fayetteville High School campus. Additional water enters the stream from the west along Sixth Street and the north and east sides of Rochier Hill.

After passing through a tunnel beneath the north/side railroad and under an old trestle that supported the now nearly forgotten east/west railroad, the Town Branch used to overflow across several wooded wetland acres of what now is the Aspen Ridge's phase one. The filling of that overflow area for the streets and building sites on the east side of the stream has resulted in a narrower stream corridor that increases the threat of flash floods downstream to the southeast.

The bridge at Eleventh Street allows only a four-foot tall opening. The banks of the Town Branch are about 6 feet tall upstream. When the stream is bankful, that means water flows over the bridge because most of the overflow land is now filled in.
Aspen Ridge and other sites to the north where absorbent soil has been replaced by concrete and impervious soil send a lot more water downstream than four years ago.

As Don Hoodenpyle predicted, debris can become lodged on the pipe, decreasing the flow amount. An inch of rain had never before sent water over 11th Street, Hoodenpyle said, relying on his memory of more than 35 years of living on the property between S. Hill and S. Duncan avenues. I expected to find a few limbs and vines and trash wrapped around the pipe. What I saw Wednesday morning was a railroad-tie-sized piece of wood that blocked water during what amounted to a 1-inch rain.
The sewer pipe blocks a significant amount of the four-foot space under the bridge and, when the water began to flow over it, nearly half the width of another foot of vertical space was blocked.

There is plenty of other debris upstream that can block the flow this weekend or whenever the next inch of rain falls in a short time.

An EXPENSIVE solution for the taxpayers would be to build a longer, taller bridge. But that would put the flash-flood water into some homes between 11th and 15th streets. They people who live in those 50- to 120-year-old houses don't deserve to be flooded. Their yards mostly allow water to soak in and contribute more to the groundwater than to the Town Branch channel. That is good and natural.

The RIGHT solution would be for upstream raingardens and detention ponds to be combined with storm gutters on buildings and streets that would send the water to areas to store it on campus and in adjacent neighborhoods and business sites rather than letting it rush downstream. Just think how much money for watering grass and trees and flowers the University could save by COLLECTNG the water and returning it to the ground!

Plans were being created to create rain-collecting ponds and rain gardens between Walton Arena and Sixth Street a few years ago. But, so far, there is no such facility in place. As Carlson Terrace, the UA's old married-student facilities have come down, a green space has been preserved for tailgating on football game days, and that does allow rain to soak in. However, some new paving was done there for parking and no widening of the stream has occurred to slow the gigantic flow coming from under Leroy Pond Drive.

A new softball facility (the current one is grand and spacious and no one could possibly justify a new one!) for the east portion of Carlson Terrace. The soccer field is immediately downstream already and was built right next to the Town Branch.

Two or 3 acres of the parking lot across the Town Branch west of the soccer stadium needs to be turned into a giant rain garden to allow the water to spread out and slow the flow south under Sixth Street. Instead of doing this four years ago when Audubon was suggesting it under the local leadership of Melissa Terry, that significant attempt to save people, trees, existing streets, infrastructure and wildlife downstream probably will be put off until the university actually gets on the sustainability bandwagon.