My personal reflections on the proposals concerning the Greenway offered us by the city on November 30th . . . by Kathleen McElroy

Dec. 16, 2009
In the choices offered us concerning the Greenway, I feel we have been given a Mafia-style offer: “We are making you an offer you can’t (i.e. don’t dare) refuse. We’ll let you keep your open water but you have to agree to a complete replacement of the sewer.”

Option 1, of course, put the storm water in a pipe.

With the city’s option 3, I saw no serious effort to build an option around reconstruction rather than repair of the sewer. Although it would save our trees, the Option 3 presented to us was irresponsible, unprofessional, and dangerous. There was no serious, complete repair of the sewer offered. Nor was there any serious attempt to curb the erosion problem which threatens both the sewer and our properties.

Option 3 was so inconsequential to the city that at the meeting, Lisa couldn’t even find the display copy of the engineering design for that option when she went looking for it on the front wall of the meeting hall. An ironic moment.

An attempt to substitute a modified, and more serious, option 3 (Option 4) was met with similar scorn: the city argued once again that covering the sewer to the appropriate depth would kill more trees than replacing (they have never documented the number of trees involved); and armoring/reinforcing rather than replacing the water channel can’t be done because they can’t get equipment in there to do it.

It looked to me as if all three City Engineers were there for one reason – to direct us to make a “choice” in which the sewer was completely replaced. They deftly achieved their goal.