Communities in the western part of Lake County near the Little Calumet River are bearing the brunt of minor flooding caused by a combination of heavy rains and snow melt, but officials are hopeful that a stretch of dry weather will cause the floodwaters to disappate.
For Munster, the river crested at 16.34 feet, Munster Town Manager Dustin Anderson said. On Wednesday morning, she measured in at 16.1, and with no more precipitation scheduled for a couple days, it was good news for the town all around.
“We had a lot of people who wanted to help with the sandbagging effort, and we’re grateful to everyone,” Anderson said. “We put down sandbags at Hawthorne Avenue and closed Hohman Avenue at around 3 a.m., but we reopened it at 6 a.m. Northcote will stay closed until Thursday as a precaution.”
People likely did get water in their basements, and as such, the town will compile a list of those areas to see if there was something structural. But so far, no one has reported any catastrophic damage, so Anderson said he was tentatively calling the town’s flood efforts a “win.”
The Town of Highland closed Kennedy Avenue at the Little Cal for a time as well, said Mark Knesek, its operations manager. Working with Hammond to set the water level, they closed the road once the water hit 15.2 feet; Knesek said the river reached 15.3 feet at its worst but has now stabilized at 15.1 feet.
A couple of ditches did overbank but quickly receded, Knesek said.
“There were three homes on Parkway that got sandbagged, but everything receded by 5 a.m.,” Knesek said. “A lot of this was run-off from the south. What used to be farmland is now all built up, and remember, we had 18 inches of snow, so if a foot of snow equals an inch of water, and we have 7.5 square miles of town with an inch of rain, that’s a lot of water that’s going to go somewhere.”
Most complaints the town received concerned gurgling drains and sump pump issues, Knesek said. The dropping temperatures Tuesday night were another big concern, and Knesek said the town was ready to salt the roads if it had turned into a skating rink. Luckily, it didn’t, he said.
The deluge of water forced the Town of Merrillville to complete a stormwater project further down on its list, said Matt Lake, stormwater utility director for the town. The Iddings Court culvert basin washed out, so the town first provided temporary crossing and then called in a company to replace the basin.
Lake said the town’s aging infrastructure presented some issues, but the ditches were fine.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
