Weekend Flooding Leaves Decatur City Vehicles Water-logged

People in the River City are cleaning up after a whole lot of rain in a short amount of time–nearly 3 1/2 inches of rain fell in the River City in about an hour Saturday.

City and county leaders say it’s not a new problem for Decatur and will likely happen again during the next heavy rainfall.

The rain flooded Lee Street, the parking lot of the Morgan County Courthouse and other nearby low-lying lots.

On Monday, the Decatur Police Department found 13 patrol cars with telltale water lines.  Each one had to be taken in to a detailer to be dried out, cleaned out and deodorized.

“It’s happened several times before,” said Morgan County Commission Chairman Ray Long.

He said it’s the first time since he’s been chairman that he’s seen the flooding this bad.

“Probably the storm drains, they probably need to be bigger or cleaned out,” said Long of a possible solution to relieve the flooding.

He said, over time, people who work at the courthouse have learned to move their cars when heavy rain falls.

“We have the new parking lot across the street that we’ve asked them to park in,” said Long.  “It’s up on a hill and in no danger of flooding.”

But a few cars owned by the State of Alabama were left in the flood zone over the weekend.

Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Director Eddie Hicks said water got to the wiring of one of them and it crept up on the EMA’s trailer parked nearby the courthouse.

County officials say there is a solution to this decades old problem, but it may not be feasible.

“Sure you could put a huge drain to the river but is it cost effective to do that,” said Hicks.

He added re-doing the drainage system could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and any help from the state would come only if the city could prove it would be worthwhile in comparing costs to benefits.

WHNT NEWS 19 tried repeatedly to contact the city’s mayor, engineer, and maintenance personnel, but our calls and messages were not answered.

We’ll try again to find out what, if anything, can or will be done.