In reading about the huge rainfall and flooding which occurred in Hopkinsville last week, I couldn’t help but think about how much worse it could have been but for all the stormwater management improvements which have been made by the Hopkinsville Surface and Stormwater Utility over the past 19 years.
My first home in Hopkinsville was located on Donna Drive and flooded within six months of my family moving in. That was in March 1975. Hopkinsville continued to suffer from flooding in the years afterwards. Finally, after another bad flooding experience, the Hopkinsville City Council created the stormwater utility by ordinance passed in November 2005. The ordinance provided for a five-person board and gave it the mission of addressing flood control in Hopkinsville. The current board is composed of Bill Nichol, chair, Dave Fernandez, vice chair, Kelley Workman, secretary, Diane Croney-Turner, treasurer and Travis Martin, city council representative. The staff includes Steve Bourne as manager and Stephanie Powell as administrative assistant.
The ordinance which created the utility contained a fee of $3 per month for residential property within the city and a corresponding fee for commercial property which was based on the amount of impervious surface the property contained. These fees brought in sufficient funds for the board to finance municipal bonds which were used to pay for substantial flood control projects within the city.
Since 2006, the utility has undertaken numerous large and small projects all over Hopkinsville to address stormwater and flood control needs. It has built retention basins, created waterways to divert stormwater, cleared out log jams in the rivers, worked with the federal government to buy properties which repeatedly flooded and converted the city-owned lakes north of Hopkinsville to flood control usage after they were no longer needed for water supply.
During the rains last week, I drove around Hopkinsville and marveled at the stormwater facilities we have created, all of which were doing their jobs and diminishing the effects of the storms. I couldn’t help but think how much worse this would have been but for the efforts of the Surface and Stormwater Utility.
I say thank you to everyone who has served on board since 2006 and thank you to everyone who has staffed the utility. And, I say thank you to Hopkinsville City Council and then-Mayor Rich Liebe for having the courage and foresight to pass Ordinance 32-2005 in November 2005. It has made a huge difference.
Dan Kemp served two terms as Hopkinsville’s mayor, from 2007 through 2014. He earned his law degree from the University of Kentucky and served four years in the U.S. Army as an officer in the Judge Advocate General Corps. He has practiced law in Hopkinsville since 1974 and has served on several local and state boards, including Board of Governors of the Kentucky Bar Association, the Executive Board of the Kentucky League of Cities, the Murray State University Board of Regents and the Jennie Stuart Medical Center Board.
