Cortland residents raise flooding concerns

One after another Cortland residents made known to council members their concerns over flooding on Walnut Creek and neighboring streets.

"A waste of time and money," Cheryl Thomas of Cortland said. "Our water bill is going to be outrageous because of this cleaning up we had to do. We're done and we need to know what's going to be done," she said.

The flooding has caused several residents thousands of dollars in the aftermath, just to keep happening over and over again.

"I know for a fact, my home there has flooded seven or eight times," Laurie Karasiewicz, Cortland resident, said. "Twice I've turned it in to insurance but I can't do it anymore, I cant keep turning it into insurance so then I eat it all," she said.

"I know I'm already $18,000 out of my pocket. Lost everything, electrical panels, furnaces, hot water heaters, washers and dryers and in my situation about half of the contents of my entire life including going back to my childhood losing everything that I've ever had growing up as a kid," another resident said.

At the council meeting Monday night, some residents also expressed navigating through seven feet of water in their yards and basements after last weekend's rainfall.

"The front of our house was like a lake. It flooded everywhere," Thomas said.

"We're gonna have a catastrophe if we don't fix this," another resident said.

Council President Kevin Piros said the issue is contributed to a number of reasons.

"The condition of the creek itself, the drainage, the ability for our existing infrastructure to pump that water out," Piros said. "Again, it's going to be an ongoing process to gather all the facts and then work with all the affected parties," he said.

Residents said this issue should have already been taken care of, however.

"If you know the water's coming, if you know you need to alternate, why have precautions not been taken in the past to solve this problem before it happened," one resident asked.

Cortland Mayor Deidre Petrosky said she couldn't answer that question.

"I don't have an answer for that I mean, I don't know what an answer to fixing (it) would be," Petrosky said.

Piros promised to do all he could to help mitigate the issue.

"I do sympathize with the folks and hopefully we can work together with all the parites including the state to come up with a plan to prevent this from in the future happening again," Piros said.

However, residents say if the issue isn't fixed this time, they'll take the issue to senators and congressmen.