City sees some storm flooding

Torrential rain, hail and snow hit Green River Friday evening and continued throughout the night.

The downpour of rain and hail affected some regions of Green River more than other. Effects on higher lying elevations were less severe, while lower lying areas of the city suffered some flooding. The area around Second South to the river suffered the most flooding Friday night.

"It was just a lot of water at once," utilities director Jason Palmer said.

The city utilities department had two crews out on Friday, making sure the city's storm system was working correctly, and kept catch basins and ditches open and flowing. The city has about 800 catch basins, and about seven miles of ditches to contend with.

"It wasn't too bad," utilities worker Dusty Hackney said. "It was just a lot of water, clogging up the catch basins and flooding the streets."

Regarding the city's utilities, Hackney said it wasn't bad. No water breaks were reported. Hackney and others in the utilities department worked on call Friday, just to keep up with the storm and keep the catch basins open.

Palmer said water was as deep as eight to 10 inches in the street near McDonalds. Water also jumped out of the ditch on Bridger, he said. The rail-yard on Second South transformed into a lake Friday as well, he said.

"This was one of those abnormal storms," Palmer said. "We've got a pretty good storm system down there. They've performed."

Even with the high levels of water around town though, Palmer said they didn't have as extreme of issues he'd seen in the past. The water treatment plant had a difficult time producing drinking water over the weekend, with the muddy river water.

The water, technically referred to having high turbidity levels, is more difficult to process.

"We're watching that pretty closely now," Palmer said.

To help the cause, utilities asked the schools and the parks department not to irrigate for a few days.

Two utility crews were patrolling the streets and maintaining catch basins and ditches again Monday. Palmer said everything should be back up to normal operations by Wednesday.