It was a storm that may have changed the conversation about flood mitigation in Cobb County.
Hundreds of homes sustained damage from a flash flood that dumped several inches of rain on the north Atlanta suburbs the night of Sept. 7.
For the first time Thursday, state and county leaders got to hear from Cobb County homeowners who are still feeling the storm’s effects. Dozens of people spoke out during a community forum at the Cobb Civic Center in Marietta, according to several people in attendance.
“Generally speaking, it kind of confirmed just how much of a gap there is in terms of aid,” Cobb County Commissioner Jerica Richardson told The Atlanta Journal Constitution on Monday. “We’re all trying to solve it, we’re all trying to move forward and there were a lot of people that were affected.”
East Cobb bore the brunt of the flash flood. Some neighborhoods have been denied loans to make repairs while some elderly residents said they were trapped in their houses after the storm collapsed driveways. Repair bills for some homeowners exceeded $200,000.
“There were some impactful stories and hopefully that will trigger some action, but I guess we’ll have to see,” said resident Hill Wright, who started an advocacy group to help homeowners decimated by the Sept. 7 storm. “Give them (county officials) some time to see if they come forward with anything. And if they don’t, I guess we’ll have to start pushing again.”
Damages were tightly localized in the heart of state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick’s (R-Marietta) district. She said she was open to policy changes at the state level to address the stormwater management concerns. She also brought with her two representatives from the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency to listen to residents’ stories.
“Homeowners can’t really handle major infrastructure projects,” Kirkpatrick told the AJC on Friday. “They don’t know how, they don’t have the money, and really, there was sort of a sense that people didn’t know what to do and that the county needed to give some guidance.”
Commission Chairperson Lisa Cupid noted that severe storms, like the one that befell Cobb County on Sept. 7, have become much more frequent in recent decades. Thursday’s meeting, she said, was a good opportunity to hear residents’ experiences directly to get a better grasp on how problematic flooding can be in Cobb and what might be done to help prevent future incidents.
“We’ve discussed this matter incidental to the flood. But it has been an ongoing discussion amongst the commission to address stormwater and look at various tools – like a stormwater utility,” Cupid said. “This may be the event that actually prompts the implementation of that tool.”
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