When it starts to rain in Williams Park, said Kelly Ledford, “your heart starts to pound.”
Williams Park is one of Lake County’s most flood-prone subdivisions, an area where some families are forced to flee their homes every year.
“We have four kids, and every time it rains, they ask if it will flood,” said Ledford, whose small frame home is still nearly ringed by sandbags left from a flood last year.
When the area floods, the well water is unsafe to drink, the septic system does not work and the power goes out. Ledford’s home filled with 4 inches of water last year, so the family spent six weeks with relatives until the flooding subsided.
Waist-deep flood waters covered the roads around nearby Slocum Lake, so that rowboats became the main mode of travel between homes and higher ground.
Ledford loves the privacy, wildlife and friends she found in heavily wooded Williams Park. But after seven years of floods, she is ready to leave.
“We have to go,” she said in anguish. “We just have to.”
Lake County officials recently have signaled intentions to apply for $1.44 million in federal funds by raising $482,000 in matching funds.
The county’s Stormwater Management Commission has proposed using the money for a $1.9 million project to buy homes that flood repeatedly and demolish them.
The commission has targeted 16 homes in Williams Park, near Wauconda, and two to five homes in the Sturm subdivision near Lake Zurich. Both subdivisions are in unincorporated Lake County.
Ledford hopes her home is one of those chosen for a buyout.
The county considers Williams Park a flooding hot spot because residents there “get water right in the living room and in the kitchen,” said Fred Royal, a commission watershed engineer. Sturm homes get water in their basements.
Lake County is drafting its first flood-mitigation plan, explained Royal, and Williams Park and Sturm will be models in “how we deal with chronic flooding in residential areas and businesses.”
The first question from owners of flood-damaged homes is how much they are likely to get for their property.
“No one can afford to sell unless they get market value,” said Donna Younquist, another Williams Park resident. “I can’t walk away. I have a mortgage.”
Royal said that the county intends to hire appraisers to determine the predisaster value of a house.
“Essentially, it will be fair market value based on normal wear and tear on the house,” he said, “rather than a house known to be flooded.”
County officials are working on the details.
Some people, such as Keith Compton, never want to leave Williams Park. He described mornings when deer wander in the woods, and he sees some humor in the tale of a man who “woke up one morning and had carp in his living room” after a sudden flood.
According to local lore, said Compton, gangsters Al Capone and Babyface Nelson owned land in Williams Park when it started in 1924 as a lakeside resort and golf course.
George Grabowski is another Williams Park resident who balks at the idea of leaving, although his low-lying lot often is covered with water. One year, he said, he jacked up his cream-colored stucco house to prevent flood waters from getting in.
Grabowski also trucked in 500 cubic yards of dirt to fill a low place, but county officials ordered him to remove the dirt. Although reluctant to leave, he wishes something could be done to stop the flooding.
“We deserve a better life,” Grabowski insists. “We live like pigs.”
Many residents also are angry about their tax bills, which are rising despite questions about property value because of flooding. Grabowski’s 1996 assessed value was $10,733. It doubled to $22,990 in 1997.
Dolores Jarchow, president of the Williams Park Improvement Association, said there are 180 homes in the subdivision, many of which started as summer cottages in the 1920s and 1930s.
“We have approximately 60 houses that flood,” said Jarchow. “Not all the (residents) in the flooded area want to sell.”
The properties range from two-story, spic-and-span homes to shabby cottages sagging from flood damage, the yards piled with ruined belongings. The landscape rises and falls sharply, so that some homes are on high ground while others sit in low, swampy bowls.
Jarchow describes Williams Park as “low to moderate income, which is quickly being turned into a slum” because of flooding. She blamed neighboring Wauconda for releasing 3 million gallons of sewage during the 1996 flood, which aggravated flooding in Williams Park.
Flooding is Williams Park’s most critical issue, said Jarchow, and the rapid pace of home-building and road construction in the region make matters worse.
“They are filling in so many wetlands, they are creating more problems,” she said. “We are the low spot in the 11-square-mile watershed.”
