Warrenville residents turned out Monday night to hear DuPage County officials explain why flooding was so bad in their community last week. And it turns out that no, it wasn't because the Fawell Dam was controlled in such a way to keep all the water upstream and out of Naperville, they said. It was just that there was an awful lot of water in places that drain into the West Branch of the DuPage River.
Sounds logical enough. Still, Warrenville was hit a lot harder during this flood than Naperville, and residents had their say. High water washed out three bridges, effectively cutting Warrenville in half for days. Some residents said they had to be evacuated, and were unhappy with what they said was poor communication by city officials.
What should Warrenville, Naperville and DuPage County learn from this experience? Should the Warrenville Road, Butterfield Road and Williams Street bridges be replaced with higher structures? How could city and county authorities better communicate with residents during emergencies like this?
Naperville does not control the dam it is dupage county that controls when the dam is open and closed.
Naperville officials do NOT control the dam. There is a commission with board members (again, not employed by Naperville) that determine the state of the Fawell Dam. Talk to them.
Well, its happened again. I was just reviewing some old comments from the last time we had a flooding problem here. And I can definitely say that Naperville is definitely to blame for the flooding on the dupage river. If the flooding was strictly due to many branches that flow into the dupage river, then it would not have risen 3 feet in just five minutes. And that's exactly what happened to our house on second street here in warrenville. Naperville close the dam sometime yesterday to preserve precious Naperville, and Warrenville properties are now being damaged because of it. This is wrong. And something needs to be done about it.
all lies, sadly this recent rain, and the dam closing at 10 am sat (dec 28th) means more floodin for warenville,
Maybe Warrenville has been built up a lot more since the flood ten years ago and that's why there was a lot of flooding last weekend. Maybe have a civil engineer look at land heights (though I am sure this is already available. We might find out there is a lot of building on low spots.
I know a few people in the area whose basements flooded. Mostly older homes built prior to sump pumps. There was a huge amount of rain and I saw predictions for 2-4" and not the 7+ " we had.
One more comment...has anyone ever noticed that Des Plaines residents flood in just about every heavy rainstorm but the residents never seem to move out of their riverside homes, which are really in a flood plain? I haven't looked on federal maps, but maybe there's a lot of flood plain in Warrenville.
Very Silly Title - is that all you could come up with. If you don't have anything meaningful to say then don't say anything at all. That's what people do when they are guilty. If Naperville had anything to do with the flooding then we should correct it and not make stupid remarks like yours.
If you feel that way then you should go live on an island, because the same people who live in Warrenville & Aurora live in Naperville too. So it's clear to me you don't like anybody.
I live off Williams Road north toward Mack. It seems that the clean-up work that is being done on the river could make the river deeper and wider to accomodate heavy rain issues. Or even build higher banks along the river in these places. The bridge on Mack Road looks old and crumbly but the real problem is all the water that comes up onto the properties surrounding the river and the bridge and Mack Road. The Warrenville Road bridge area was also a disaster. I wanted to go to the Warrenville Recreation Center Sunday morning but was afraid I would never make it back home from my only way in and out, which was Mack east toward Winfield Rd. I have no idea if any of these suggestions are even plausible, but it would be very helpful not to totally strand a section of town. As far as communications, the Weather Channel was giving us alerts about flooding. Could they also give more detailed alerts? Or channel 10 alerts? Or the different Chicago TV station websites? But then again, we were lucky to have electricity.
Just blame Naperville for buying pieces of Warrenville and calling it Naperville and buying pieces of Aurora and calling it Naperville.