INDIANAPOLIS — When it rains in parts of Fountain Square, residents say the streets can quickly fill with water.
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"It's like a small, little river," said Ciera Brown, a Fountain Square resident.
Brown said the flooding has been a persistent problem in the neighborhood.
"It just floods really poorly on the streets," Brown said.
Now, construction crews with the Indianapolis Department of Public Works are working on a project designed to change that, installing a new trunk-line storm sewer in the Fountain Square neighborhood.
DPW says projects like this start long before construction crews show up. Field investigators in the engineering department assess infrastructure conditions and assign what the city calls an Initial Priority Rating, or IPR.
"Our field investigators who work in the engineering department will go out and create initial priority ratings based off the condition of the infrastructure," Harrison Rice, a DPW public information officer, said. "It's a rating on a zero-to-100 scale. We usually pick projects that are over 70 out of 100 as far as their rating."
The city says those scores consider several factors, including the age of drainage infrastructure and how often residents report flooding through the Mayor's Action Center.
Rice says the Fountain Square project rose to the top after years of concerns from residents and business owners.
"We saw the historical flooding that has been present ever since 2015, and it was really important to start constructing a project in Fountain Square given the impact that it had to residents," Rice said.
The new storm sewer will stretch along Shelby Street from Pleasant Run Creek north to Woodlawn Avenue. City engineers say it is designed large enough to handle future drainage expansion.
But for neighbors who have dealt with flooding for years, the real test will come the next time heavy rain moves in.
"Hope for the best and see what happens in July… and if not, hopefully they figure out another solution," Brown said.
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Adam Schumes is the In Your Community reporter for East Side Indy. He joined WRTV in December 2021. Adam has a passion for telling stories and giving people a voice they might not have had before. Share your story ideas and important issues with Adam by emailing him at adam.schumes@wrtv.com.
