Goshen addresses flood resilience efforts at public meeting

Mar. 5—GOSHEN — The city of Goshen is continuing to work on its flood resilience plan.

On Tuesday, area leaders and community members met at the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds to learn about recent updates and explore future planning options.

"We have some really important things in place," said Goshen's urban forester and Director of the Department of Environmental Resilience Aaron Sawatsky-Kingsley. "We should feel good about that. We should continue to build on those things even as we work to implement our plan and take future steps along the way."

In 2023 city purchased, on behalf of the Stormwater Department, a parcel of land on Indiana Avenue to ensure it would continue to be used for mitigations. The department also addressed drainage issues along city roads and had a 6-acre retention pond installed during the construction of a new Brinkly RV building along College Avenue.

Rock Run Creek is in the process of being cleaned up following the devastation caused by the Emerald Ash Boar, installing water monitoring gauges in waterways, and marking storm drains.

The city continuing to work toward acquiring other flood-prone lands.

"We need to be thinking carefully about other such pieces of property so that we have good criteria when and if they become available to us, how to bring them into city ownership possibly or when not to also because that's an important part in how we strategize keeping flood zones and flood-prone land available for excess water," Sawatsky-Kingsley said.

Stormwater Coordinator Jason Kauffman explained the many types of flooding that a region may experience.

"When we start to look at the waterways that flow through Goshen and the surrounding area, we start to realize how many of those waterways we've disrupted," Kauffman said.

Disrupted waterways, he said, come back, but there are many ways that flooding can occur including ice jams, leaves clogging storm drains and others.

Stormwater ordinances in the city are being updated based on legislation that passed in 2021.

"Stormwater impacts all of it," he said. "It has to go somewhere and if we don't plan for where it's going to go, it's going to have an impact."

Goshen Parks Department Superintendent Tanya Heyde said that flood zones are commonly made into parks, as a way to continue to store water without risk of them being bought up by developers and creating potential future harm to the nearby communities.

In August 2018, Heyde's office was finally relocated from a building in Shanklin Park to its new location safely outside of the flood zone on Jackson Street, as part of the flood resilience plan. The park maintenance building is in the process of being relocated.

"A 100-year flood isn't necessarily going to occur once every hundred years," said Goshen Historical Society Executive Director Ron Hoke. "It's just the percentage of chances that it's going to flood."

Hoke said while the February 2018 flood was the worst on record in Goshen, and a 100-year flood, at that, it's not the worst the city has experienced. In 1892, before records were kept, a photo from photographer Reverend William Parfitt shows the height of the waters three days after the historic flood crested.

"The water actually flowed into the canal down by Jefferson Street and up by Lincoln (Avenue), it just filled everything," Hoke said. "All the basements were full, the mills and everything, and so we figure that (the crest) was at least a 14-foot flood, probably a 15."

Hoke was one of many who brought presentations and information to booths before and after the meeting.

"It's easier to do this now than it was then," he said. "Shanklin Park was swamp, the area around Plymouth Street where the county garage is, that was swamp, everything's been filled in and we have asphalt everywhere."

Hoke said other floods occurred in 1902, 1908, 1985, and 1990, and finally 2018 with crests between 11.03 and 12.53 feet.

"If you had 4-6 inches of rain dumped in the Goshen area, Elkhart Township, down to New Paris, Millersburg, this would occur very quickly, particularly since the areas that used to absorb water have all been filled with asphalt and landfill," Hoke said.

Sawatsky-Kingsley called 2018 a 'turning point" in the city's approach to climate action.

"Many people remember the flood in 2018 and I think that had an impact on the psyche of Goshen where the community said we need to be better prepared in the future and there was an increased awareness," Mayor Gina Leichty said. "We needed to figure out good strategies to make sure that we're planning for flood events because they're more and more likely to happen and make sure that we're developing in smart ways."

The program is an annual continuing education on the city's flood resilience plan, which was officially adopted in 2022.

ABC57 meteorologist Tom Coomes said this February has been the warmest on record, and the winter has been the second warmest and sixth wettest.

"I'm not telling you that need to be just, 'Oh my Gosh, the climate change is coming to get me tomorrow,' but maybe there should be at least a little more sense of urgency," Coomes added. "In my opinion, we are already being impacted by climate change... I think it's a big deal that Goshen has a plan, even if they don't know everything about the plan, it's a big deal."

Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.