Winnebago County officials weigh drain-tile fixes as ditches remain waterlogged

Winnebago County highway staff told county leaders on Tuesday that efforts to fix a chronically wet county ditch face steep technical and legal hurdles and that a proposed drain-tile installation carries no guarantee of success. Chair (speech by the meeting Chair) led the discussion and the highway official overseeing the work laid out the constraints.

The highway official said crews completed roughly 1,200 feet of ditching but that across a stretch of about 1,800 feet there is only “roughly about 1 foot of fall,” a gradient staff called too flat to rely on as a sole remedy. “There’s no guarantee that it’s gonna work,” the official said when describing contractor warnings about installing drain tile in that low-lying area. The official added that Winnebago County’s shallow groundwater and a dense concentration of buried utilities make excavation and consistent…