On Christmas Eve, a crew was working to regrade the bottom of the Heather Hill detention basin in Flossmoor to correct a problem that resulted in pooling water in the structure that was built during the summer months.
The basin is part of a multi-phase project designed to reduce flooding downtown and in the Heather Hill neighborhood. In spring during the lead up to the start of construction, village officials said the basin would be dry 99% of the time.
At the Flossmoor village board meeting on Oct. 21, Mayor Michelle Nelson noted the problem and asked Public Works Director John Brunke for an update.
“We were told that there would not be any water in the basin of Heather Hill. That doesn’t seem to be the case,” she said. Brunke said he was working with the contractor, Pan-Oceanic, to arrange for remediation.
At the Dec. 2 meeting, Brunke provided another update. He said the contractor was expected to correct the problem in coming weeks and that final payments for the project were being held until the corrections were made.
“There is a regrading work to be done to remove that water,” he said. “We are still holding quite a bit of money, to the tune of over $300,000 on the job, so more than enough to cover any work that they need to do down there. We’ll be getting that completed before we ever pay out.”
The water collecting in the basin is mainly from rain fall. Brunke said the basin is connected to storm sewers on adjacent Heather Hill School property. The rest of the drainage lines connecting the basin to the wider storm water collection system have not been built yet.
When the whole project is completed, the basin will receive storm water from the Flossmoor Road viaduct area downtown and from the area around Berry Lane where storm water sewers were improved in 2022 as phase 1 of the project.
