For residents of one Center Grove area neighborhood, flooding has been a recurring nightmare since the neighborhood was built nearly two decades ago.
The Stone Village neighborhood, south of Stones Crossing Road and west of State Road 135, was hit extremely hard by flooding in 2008, but residents say hardly a year goes by without streets, and occasionally homes, being flooded. Any time heavy rain is expected in the area, fire departments are quick to check on the residents, ready to bring boats to rescue people should floodwaters reach dangerous levels as they have in the past.
“Every time it rains you don’t sleep, you pace and you worry,” said Virginia Slayton, who has lived in the neighborhood since 2003. “I’m afraid this is going to happen again.”
During the 2008 flood, water crept up until it was running into her home through her front and back door. With the water rising, she rushed to unplug electric appliances and get items off the floor.
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She ended up with a couple inches of water inside her home, which was more than enough to do serious damage. The frantic rush of trying to save everything she can is an experience she doesn’t want to have again, she said.
Without flood insurance at the time, all Slayton had to begin repairs was a check for about $6,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Volunteers from a local church helped get furniture out of her home, and she spent years slowly making repairs and replacing items that were damaged, Slayton said.
Flood insurance was one of the first purchases she made. The investment paid off last year, when water again got into her home during heavy flooding in July. She had to pay her $1,200 deductible, but she received $47,000 to cover the costs of repairs, including drywall she hadn’t replaced since the previous flood, which had small spots of black mold, Slayton said.
Members of the Stone Village homeowners association say the issues with flooding are due to how the neighborhood was originally designed and the amount of development that has risen up around it, leading to more water runoff. Heavy rain turns streets into rivers and backyards into ponds, Stone Village resident Larry Hoffman said.
The association hired a consultant to study their drainage issues, and found that an area of more than 100 acres drains into their neighborhood, said Stephen Ray, a member of the homeowners association board.
A stormwater drain on State Road 135 carries water to an area east of Stone Village. During heavy rain, that water ends up on streets in the neighborhood and goes through stormwater pipes to the neighborhood retention pond, Ray said.
The homeowners association has taken step to mitigate the impact of flooding. Last fall, they added a second spillway into their retention pond, a $6,000 project to help drain water faster so that it doesn’t back up into their neighborhood, Ray said.
But they also want the county to take action to alleviate the issue. They would like for the drainage pipe from State Road 135 to be extended further west to a lake that the neighborhood retention pond also drains into, something they plan to ask the county to do, he said.
Leaving their neighborhood isn’t easy. If a property owner has flood insurance or has had water damage, they are required to notify a potential buyer, said Sharon Moulder, a Stone Village resident, who is also a real estate agent.
That makes finding a buyer much harder and means that they will likely have to sell their homes for significantly less than they paid for them, Ray said.
Ray didn’t know about the flooding issues when he bought his home, he said. He closed on the sale in December 2013, right before 5 inches of rain caused major flooding in Johnson County. The water didn’t enter his home, but had the closing only been a couple of weeks later, he wouldn’t have bought the home, Ray said.
