These Fort Worth backyards turn into marshes when it rains. What’s the fix?

Twyla and Steve Loftin installed a Michael Phelps Signature Swim Spa in their backyard a few years ago. The 5-foot-tall hot tub-cum-fitness device is fitted with built-in seating, an overhead canopy and more than three dozen jets.

Last fall, a few yards away, a smaller, smellier pool without Olympian accreditation formed.

“This is the way it stays, rain or not,” Twyla said, motioning to a two-inch deep puddle in the middle of her lawn as a fresh downpour replenished it.

The small pond, several square feet in size, nourishes its own ecosystem of algae. The ground around it resembles marshland, a wet morass of mud and grass. Twyla constructed a makeshift land bridge out of bricks to walk dry from her backdoor to her shed.

The unwelcome water fixture is the latest, most extreme manifestation of a yearslong drainage problem on their property in west Fort Worth, the couple say. Flagging the issue in the neighborhood Facebook group earlier this month unearthed similar complaints from more than a dozen families across their subdivision.

Angry residents blame shoddy construction for their swampy yards; the company that built them casts doubt on their claims but pledges to investigate them; government officials point to the clay soil underfoot. The problem and its murky causes epitomize broader strains between infrastructure, housing and climate playing out across the city.

‘Horrendous’

The Loftins moved to the Palmilla Springs housing development in 2019. They were among the first settlers on their freshly constructed block, the latest addition to the bulging clump of single-family homes attached to the northern edge of Interstate 30, about two miles west of West Loop 820.

HistoryMaker Homes established the development in the early 2000s, periodically unrolling new pockets of houses over the ensuing decade. The property company built its first home in southeast Fort Worth in 1949; almost 20 HistoryMaker housing communities have spawned across the Metroplex since.

The Loftin residence sits near the bottom of a hill that crests off the subdivision’s main thoroughfare.

The couple recalled receiving no warning of potential drainage issues on their property, though they quickly revealed themselves. Rainwater in their backyard would take days to dissipate, Twyla remembered. Parts of the lawn remained permanently bloated with moisture.

“It was a big old mud pit,” Twyla said.

In response to their complaints, HistoryMaker builders installed a french drain — subterranean piping packed between soil and gravel designed to absorb water and redirect it toward the street. It didn’t work.

A longtime contractor for the family visited Twyla’s home earlier this month and inspected the system. “He pulled up the french drain they put in and said essentially this is worthless,” she said.

Diego Martinez and his family moved to the home next door in 2020.

“Never had the impression that we were going to have any issues,” he said. “We started having issues immediately.”

Builders had planted drains in his backyard soon after he moved in. He worried the piping was too far from the retaining wall he shared with his neighbors, whose homes perched a few feet above his.

“They said that we should have no issues,” Martinez recalled. “We took their word for it, and we’re in this predicament now.”

A brook stretching the length of his lawn forms during heavy downpours, according to videos shared with the Star-Telegram. It usually takes days to evaporate, he says; some corners of the yard are constantly muddy. In recent years, his driveway has started to shift.

“The sitting water around the foundation is eventually going to cause foundation issues,” he said. “We have talked about making the move.”

He had contractors come by and assess things. “They disagreed with [the] design,” Martinez said. When asked to specify how the workers would describe the state of his drainage system, he was curt: “Horrendous.” They quoted him $11,000 to $16,000 to fix it, he added.

Through synthesizing photos and complaints shared on the community Facebook group (and reviewed by the Star-Telegram), Twyla documented drainage problems on at least 10 other streets across the subdivision.

Chad Mathis lives about half a mile south of the Loftins. Rainwater pools along his back fence, forming a makeshift coastline that takes days to recede. Only parching summer temperatures dry the grass.

“The back of the fence, a good eight months out of the year, is like a mudhole,” he said.

Mathis also called in contractors to evaluate his drainage woes. They, too, were alarmed.

“He definitely said it was a problem,” Mathis said. “He said the ground the entire street was built on should have been raised.”

Saturation

“HistoryMaker is going to be looking into this,” a company representative told the Star-Telegram in response to questions about resident concerns. “If your yard is draining, great; if it’s not, we fix it. But it’s really only covered for one year.”

HistoryMaker’s home warranty policy tasks households with maintaining their property’s drainage system. The homebuilder, it elaborates, claims no responsibility for damages resulting from “soil erosion or runoff caused by [the homeowner’s] failure to maintain the Builder-established grades, changes in the grading caused by erosion, or changes in the level of the underground water table, drainage structures, devices or swales, stabilized soil, sodded, seeded or landscaped areas.”

The company “occasionally” installs french drains — at the request of homeowners or when a visual inspection deems them necessary, the representative said.

“If I determine there could’ve been something else done, we’re probably going to go ahead and do it, even five years later,” he added, referring specifically to the Loftin’s case (he plans on stopping by the home later this week).

The representative didn’t seem aware that more than a dozen residents had reported shoddy drain systems; he suspects, in many cases, resident-triggered erosion to be the primary culprit. It’s not clear how many Palmilla Springs homes — which number in the hundreds — suffer from soggy backyards. Some residents living farther up Loftin’s street told the Star-Telegram that they hadn’t encountered any drainage problems since moving in.

Drainage complications are ubiquitous in Metroplex homebuilding, across builders and properties, the representative stressed. City officials, in large part, shared that assessment.

“It is very common during rainy seasons, when we have had a lot of back-to-back rainfall as we have recently, for the soil across Fort Worth to become very saturated where they can no longer, quickly absorb stormwater,” Jennifer Dyke, the assistant director of the Fort Worth Transportation and Public Works department’s stormwater division, said. “Much of Fort Worth soil is clay, which doesn’t absorb stormwater quickly, so standing water in low areas in residential yards, open spaces, etc. is very common after rain events.”

Dyke’s team hasn’t yet received complaints from Palmilla Springs residents, she said. Those seeking city help, she added, can file a complaint or contact officials through the MyFW App.

The government has pledged millions to buttress and revamp the city’s stormwater management infrastructure. Crippling floods, fed by intensifying rainfall, have imbued the efforts with more urgency; so too has the region’s breakneck population growth.

Meanwhile, Loftin and her neighbors crave more immediate relief.

“I don’t want to spend $7,000 to put drainage in,” she said. “I just want to enjoy my backyard.”