Homeowners, governments spar over needed flood repairs

By Heather Vogell

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A patchwork of often-vague local policies governs how much counties and cities do to help homeowners in subdivisions when a storm drain or other anti-flooding element fails.

Pricey repairs can become a hot potato. Disputes over who must do what sometimes end in court, costing local governments and residents thousands of dollars more.

Some metro counties and cities resist performing maintenance, state records and interviews show.

They seek instead to shift the burden to homeowners associations, which sometimes try to foist it on the unlucky resident with the flooding problem — even when the cause is community-wide runoff.

That approach has its critics. Cobb County takes control of most new storm water structures after they are built.

“The property owners aren’t prepared to pay for those repairs,” said Sam Olens, Cobb County Commission chairman.

The problem is growing metrowide as storm water elements age and become inadequate to handle water flowing from new roads and buildings.

Neglected infrastructure is one of the problems contributing to the metro area’s recent flooding, an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. Years of rapid growth and poor planning have also helped make the region more susceptible to wash-outs than in years past, the newspaper found.

Georgia environmental officials offer no guidance in disputes between residents, homeowners associations and local officials. State and federal law charges the state with policing pollution, not flooding. “There’s nothing we can do about volume,” said Lisa Perrett, an environmental specialist with the state Environmental Protection Division.

Concern that metro governments were not maintaining storm water infrastructure such as detention ponds, storm water lines and catch basins — drains in the street that collect rainwater — prompted the EPD to require more inspections beginning in 2008. In response, metro governments have sought to complete inventories of their storm water systems and improve their inspection and maintenance programs.

In recent years, some local governments have begun requiring new homeowners associations to sign agreements promising to maintain storm water elements.

Even so, local governments can be hesitant to get tough with foot-dragging associations for fear of political backlash from residents who don’t want to bear the costs, said Ron Feldner, an engineer and storm water consultant in Roswell who works with local officials.

“Government has to enforce the maintenance on it,” he said. “If you push for that, the homeowners association money is not going to the swimming pool or the clubhouse, it’s going to mucking out the detention pond.”

In 2008, Alpharetta began inspecting detention ponds in subdivisions and notifying homeowners associations they must promptly fix problems.

Some city residents, however, said their homeowners associations have balked.

Christopher Nickum lives on a pond in the Tuxford subdivision in Alpharetta that provides drainage for several properties. The homeowners along it can’t afford to maintain the pond or its dam, he said, and a covenant requiring them to do so has expired. The homeowners association has declined to accept responsibility for maintaining it or other, dry, detention ponds, he said, and the city is no help.

“That is a lot of potential money that we as homeowners just don’t have the resources to take care of,” Nickum said. “It’s turned kind of ugly. We don’t want it to be that way.”

Several Tuxford board members did not respond to requests for comment on the dispute.

Diane Scharfstein said runoff and trash from her Alpharetta neighborhood flows through a pipe into the detention pond on the back of her property, which she bought in 1992.

She is suing her homeowners association and the city to try to force them to take over maintenance.

“I have all this property that is useless to me,” she said, adding that she never agreed to manage storm water for the community. “Nobody ever said anything to me about that detention pond when I purchased my home.

“Storm water management is a community responsibility, not an individual responsibility,” she said.

Pete Sewczwicz, director of engineering and public works for Alpharetta, said most homeowners associations have been receptive to the city’s inspection program. He did not comment on Scharfstein’s situation because of the litigation. The city is researching legal issues related to the Tuxford dispute, he said.

Kennesaw’s Steve Turner, an environmental specialist coordinator, said homeowners associations often ignore drainage even when local ordinances make them legally responsible for it. “They’ll call the city at the last minute,” he said.

Other times, homeowners associations fall apart, leaving no one in charge, Turner said.

“The city can’t just watch people drown in floods,” he said. “So we’ll step in — on an emergency situation only.”

There’s an incentive for counties and cities not to bail out homeowners. Once the government has maintained a structure, said Cumming attorney Stuart Teague, residents can argue it is responsible for the job forever under Georgia law.

While disputes tend to draw more attention, at least one Forsyth homeowners association has taken a proactive approach.

Residents’ concerns prompted the homeowners association at Plantation and Preserve at Brookwood to hire a consultant to check its storm water detention system. The consultant recommended work on a pond where trees and plants growing on a berm — an earthen dam — threatened its integrity over time, said resident Paul Hass, who is liaison officer for the association’s architectural review board. A concrete drainage structure with blockages also needed repairs.

The association has budgeted between $23,000 and $26,000 for the work, Hass said. The group sets aside a portion of dues for capital improvements.

“It’s the same kind of preventive maintenance you have with roads,” he said. “If you keep it from getting too badly deteriorated, then the cost can be manageable.”

Many homeowners associations, however, don’t understand they have similar obligations, he said. “This may come as news to a lot of them.”