Soap Lake City Council discusses storm drain maintenance

SOAP LAKE — Wednesday’s Soap Lake City Council meeting saw discussion between city council members and the public regarding storm drains not being cleaned frequently enough, which may have caused flooding during recent rainstorms.

An anonymous letter to the city, read by Mayor Michelle Agliano during the Mayor’s Message portion of the meeting, attributed flooding on the letter writer’s property – from a rainstorm on July 10 – to a buildup in nearby storm drains and asked that the city take responsibility on their end for keeping the storm drains in good working order.

“My comment to that,” said Agliano, “is that we are a small city, and I understand the trouble it causes when we have such a torrential rain, but we only have … four people and that’s Public Works, that can do only so much. So, we are doing the best we can to bring these into order.”

Soap Lake Chamber of Commerce Vice President Susan Carson also commented regarding the storm drains and the Public Works department.

“I do commercial construction, new, retrofit, buildings, you name it, I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I have to say we need some new leadership and training up there,” said Carson.

Carson said that Public Works is not putting in the necessary effort to clean the storm drains and that she wanted the city to take more pride in smaller maintenance projects and upkeep around town.

“We need some new blood, we need some training, we need a different outlook, because, yes, we only get rain once in a blue moon, but you know what, some of this could have been avoided just by simple maintenance,” said Carson.

Council Member Kayleen Bryson said that she would like to see more regular maintenance and cleaning of the storm drains, but on a schedule that the council can hold people accountable to.

“I was reading our Stormwater Management Planning Proposal from 2019, and it was talking about things like ash from Mount Saint Helens and stuff still in the drains,” said Bryson. “It’s been suggested we spend some more dedicated time cleaning them out. The proposal here suggested that they were done once a year. I think they need to be done more frequently than that. Even though we don’t get that much rain, it’s very destructive when it does occur.”

Agliano said that the city had lost three public works employees in recent months, but has hired two more, and a third will be joining the department at the end of August.

“We now have two public works people that seem to have the energy and want to do things and make it work faster,” said Agliano.

During the meeting, the council also voted unanimously to approve the most recent city purchasing manual. According to the manual, it will guide the city by providing a uniform system for purchasing, accountability for the proper use of city resources, and equal opportunity and competition for suppliers and contractors, among other objectives.

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android today.