Hopkinsville officials outline repairs, buyouts and maintenance plan after repeated flooding

Hopkinsville City Council and stormwater officials outlined a package of repairs, local buyout options and maintenance changes Monday after three heavy rain events this year that overwhelmed parts of the city’s drainage system.

The city’s stormwater manager, Steve Born, and Public Works Director Mike Perry told council members that recent storms exposed aging basins, damaged auxiliary spillways at watershed lakes and created log jams in creeks that must be removed to reduce downstream flooding.

Born said the city has reallocated funds originally intended for a large South Fork flood-control facility to immediate repairs and projects. He gave detailed cost estimates for several near-term items: about $1 million to clear log jams in the river, roughly $500,000 for repairs on each of two dams’ spillways, and a proposed local buyout program budgeted at about $3.1 million. Born said the buyout funding, combined with grant shortfalls, would likely cover about eight to 10 structures on a local basis depending on appraisals; he added the city currently has about 20 property owners on a voluntary buyout list.

Born described the watershed lakes as a key flood-control asset and said an engineering study of four lakes estimated about $800,000 to address state-identified deficiencies; repairs after recent storms raised that repair estimate by roughly $750,000 for auxiliary spillways. He said the state…