MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WTVF) — Christopher Matthews has lived in his Murfreesboro home for years, and is planning to buy the property from his grandmother soon.
However, for the past year, he said flooding has become a serious problem — and he believes new schools built across the street are to blame.
Matthews said the trouble started after Rutherford County Schools built Poplar Hill Elementary and Middle School across the street.
During heavy storms, he said a retention pond across the street near the school property fills up and pushes a large volume of water through a culvert that empties directly into his backyard.
"They built the school, and then all of a sudden we're getting all this water now," Matthews said.
This past Saturday night, Matthews arrived home to a flooded yard and crawlspace.
"The septic smell was so strong, you couldn't hardly stand it in there," Matthews said. "I've never seen that much water like that come over."
He’s been dealing with this issue for awhile.
Matthews spoke with NewsChannel 5, last September after a similar flooding event.
Following this most recent flood, I followed up with Rutherford County Schools. The district initially responded with the following statement.
With the opening of Poplar Hill Middle, Rutherford County Schools is excited to invest in the community with another great school for parents and students. The particular property in question does have a history of some drainage issues that predate the school. However, we have had engineers study the tenant’s concerns, and we have added more volume to our retention pond to help mitigate the situation. As for this past weekend, heavy rain caused flash flooding conditions that impacted multiple areas in the county on both Friday evening and Saturday. Our operations department surveyed the area and the rain effects on Sunday. We want the new school to be an asset to the community and will continue to work with area residents on any issues that we can control.
It appears the additional volume added to the retention pond wasn’t enough to prevent the most recent flooding this past weekend.
I went back to the school district to ask whether it could guarantee the problem would not happen again.
The district responded by saying the school is meeting water retention requirements and pointed to the recent flash flooding as a contributing factor.
Here is a portion of the second statement I received.
Our statement mentioned that there were two different flash flooding warnings issued for our county this weekend (Friday and Saturday) which caused flooding in multiple areas of the county. So that is definitely a factor in this situation. We had engineers study the situation, and we are meeting the requirements for water retention.
Click here for information on resources available to help people impacted by flooding in Tennessee.
Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at robb.coles@newschannel5.com.
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