Bungle in the jungle

Motorists and area homeowners regularly complain about the weed-infested jungle in the middle of Country Homes Boulevard. This eyesore resulted from the so-called Restoration Project in 2014 that replaced the asphalt drainage ditch with underground pipes and a “bio-infiltration swale.” Although the overgrowth looks about as scenic as those county commissioner re-election signs, I’m sure that it does remove some pollutants in the small amount of above-ground stormwater from the roadway.

Meanwhile, the 4-foot diameter pipes buried beneath the vegetation supposedly contain the much larger amount of stormwater runoff from Five Mile Prairie and convey it to the Price and Wall treatment facility. County officials stated that these subsurface pipes would cure the problem of runoff leaking and potentially draining into the aquifer through the fractures in the old asphalt ditch.

Unfortunately, the pipes in this $3 million mile-long boondoggle were not adequately sealed; most of the Five Mile Prairie runoff does not reach the treatment facility, but instead seeps into the ground beneath the pipes, where pollutants cannot be mitigated by the surface vegetation.

At least county officials can boast that the cracked asphalt is gone. Their motto: “We’ve got 99 problems, but a ditch ain’t one!”

Dave Ayres

Spokane