Flooding in one DeKalb County neighborhood is tearing up people's yards and creating a safety concern for others.
Channel 2’s Wendy Corona learned from residents that work to fix one problem appears to have created another.
The water rushes through Kevin Perry's backyard and pools like a lake. He said he’s even more concerned now that he's seeing part of his yard eaten away. He's also concerned for the community's safety.
“All this dirt has washed away and made the fence unstable. It's all falling in over here,” Perry said.
Perry said there used to be about 7 more feet of land around the fence but it's gotten washed away.
In an email, DeKalb County Roads and Drainage Department said they did repair a section of damaged pipe between his home and his neighbor's this summer and another section needs to be replaced because a rock is blocking it. The county says the problem is not the pipe, but that Gresham Avenue is in a floodplain.
“It’s literally gotten 100 times worse since they've done this,” Perry said.
Neighbor Elizabeth James agrees.
“For the past eight years, maybe nine years, nothing happened then all of a sudden these floods and things done came,” James said.
The water from Christmas Eve's storm made its way into her basement and came dangerously close to flooding her car.
“I started doing a lot of praying, I'll tell you that,” James said. “It was frightening, it was frightening because first of all I'm not able to get around like I used to.”
Perry said this is on the county's radar, they've spoken about it quite a bit and he says they've told him they will be able to address this problem in the next two years.
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