La Grange Man Says He Spends $60K To Fight Flooding

La Grange IL

16 September, 2021

8:35 AM

Description

LA GRANGE, IL — Dealing with flooding has been no minor expense for La Grange resident Bob Poggensee. He said he lives in the path of one of the arrows on a village map that shows the direction of floodwaters. The water flooding his house, he said, is coming from the La Grange Country Club, which the village is pressing to help with a solution. Now, Poggensee, who lives in the 800 block of South Stone Avenue, expects to spend another $10,000. "In June, my external stairs sprung a leak. What? How do external stairs spring a leak? It's a saturation since 2010 in my back yard that gets 9 inches of water," Poggensee told the Village Board on Monday. "So now I have another project where I'm spending $10,000 on another drainage pump to take water from my stairwell and pump it out. I feel like I'm living on borrowed time." He said he must do the project. "I'm afraid for the next rains in October that will come," Poggensee said. "Your residents are spending thousands of their own dollars with no help from the village. All I can do now is put a wall around my property and protect it." He ended his speech with a simple direction for village officials: "Fix it." Shawn Graham-White, who lives at Eighth Avenue and 51st Street, told the board that he and his wife suffer from PTSD as a result of flooding. "The water that is coming seems to be a lot more in a shorter time," he said. Ali Bowe, who lives at 50th Street and Spring Avenue, took the village to task for its handling of flooding. Officials, she said, have put too much emphasis on the 50th Street storm sewer project. That work depends on a successful outcome in years-long litigation between La Grange and the Hanson Aggregates quarry in neighboring McCook. "It will never get done. It's a pipe dream, pardon the pun," Bowe said. "It's insulting for you to come here and say you're working on it, and nothing new is being done. I just have a problem with that." Residents' hands are tied, she said, while village officials continue to say they understand the problem. "You're screwing everyone who could be helped," she said. "Let's save most people now and keep working and plowing forward to get everyone covered. It's not fair or beneficial to have those residents go through this trauma year after year." At the meeting, the village gave an update on the litigation with Hanson.