Burbank Residents Demand Answers From City Officials About Flooding

Photo: View of 86th Street and Rutherford in Burbank on Aug. 22 after Melvina Reservoir gushed sewage into street.

Burbank residents are demanding answers about the town’s chronic flooding that has sent water spilling over the banks of the Melvina reservoir on 87th Street and State Road into surrounding neighborhoods for the third time in a year.

While residents were duly warned through the Everbridge Emergency Alert system via text, email and robo calls when the rain began to fall early in the morning of Aug. 22, trying to get answers about the Melvina Reservoir’s chronic flooding from Mayor Harry Klein and other city officials has been an entirely different matter.

“It was like the movie ‘The Blob,’” Joanna Stefanek said. “Our neighbor came pounding on the door and told us we were about take in water. Within 30 minutes it was seeping through the walls.”

Stefanek and her husband, Jeff, lost everything -- furniture, clothing, appliances, photographs -- as their home in the 6400 block of West 84th Street took in two feet of water.

“We couldn’t get back in until Friday night,” she said. “We went into destruction mode, tearing up the carpet. We’ve only been living in the house a year. [In April 2013] when had a flood we had to take out two feet of drywall.”

Now camped out in her grandfather’s apartment, Stefanek and her husband think the house is unsalvageable.

“We were under a state of emergency and [the mayor] never came out once,” Stefanek said. “He never addressed the news media and all the TV stations and newspapers were out here.”

Nilton Garcia is another Burbank resident has also been trying to an elected official or departmental head to return his emails and phone calls. Garcia shared with Patch numerous documented attempts to reach Mayor Harry Klein and public works director, Bill Trovato.

His emails to Trovato were answered by Trovato’s secretary, who told Garcia that her boss does not have an email address. She did assure Garcia in her responses that his concerns were being taken seriously.

“My neighbor had to power wash his driveway because of the feces and toilet paper on it and in his grass,” Garcia said, who lives in the 8600 block of South Rutherford. “This is part of the problem, on the website there are no officials’ email addresses available for constituents to communicate with. The ‘contact Burbank’ via email on the website does not work, never has for me. The only way to contact anyone is via phone. Is that for the purpose of not having anything documented? I can only reach my alderman via phone as well. It makes it quite frustrating.”

Klein defended the city’s response to residents in the aftermath of the flood.

“We communicated with people, we sent out a robo call. We did that initially,” Klein said. “I was out at 3:30 in the morning riding around talking with the police chief and the fire chief trying to ascertain what was happening with the storm.”

Klein said that city officials returned every phone call they received during last week’s flood event.

“I’ve been going around for three days,” he said. “How do I communicate unless they call us.”

The mayor also explained that he was too busy helping the police and fire chief last Friday to talk to the news media and apprise them of the situation.

“I’m trying to do my job. All the media wants to know is what I’m going to do,” Klein said.

Blaming the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which owns the Melvina Reservoir at 87th Street and State Road, Klein believes the depth and volume have changed since the reservoir was installed in 1968, due to silt buildup at the bottom.

“I think it’s the Stone Age when you have pumps and no backup generator if the electricity goes out,” Klein said. “The pumps should be maintained so they’re fully operational.”

MWRD spokeswoman Allison Fore said the agency periodically removes debris and cleans the reservoir to endure that volume is maintained.

“However, upon the request of Burbank, the MWRD recently surveyed the reservoir to ensure the volume is still at the original designed level,” Allison “We believe there has been no change in the volume as a result of siltation.”

As for the reservoir remaining operational last Friday, Fore said that one of the power feeds to the reservoir had a bad transformer.

“ComEd was called out immediately to replace the transformer to ensure back up power remained in service,” Fore answered via email. “The station operated as designed throughout Friday’s event.”

Backup generators at the Melvina reservoir aren’t needed because the station is provided with redundant power from ComEd.

“In the event one source of power fails, operation transfers over to the other power source,” Fore said.

Burbank and MWRD officials were to meet this week to look at short and long term solutions. Fore said that legislation signed by Gov. Pat Quinn in June has given the MWRD more autonomy in working with communities to address flooding issues.

Meanwhile, Klein said that he, too, took in three inches of water in his basement. Asked if he thought God hated Burbank with its recent floods, the mayor said: “God should love Burbank. We got enough churches.”

An MWRD representative will be at the Burbank City Council meeting at 7:30 p.m. on September 10, in city hall at 6530 W. 79th St. Since the mayor and other city officials can’t seem to figure out 21st technology, maybe then Burbank residents will finally get some answers.