Tuesday, July 15, 2008- One day after Newschannel 9 discovers major problems with a secondary flooding area along Mesa Hills, Mayor John Cook responds to questions about the area.

The flooding along Mesa Hills one week ago caused the primary drains to clog with dirt, rocks and other debris.  City engineers tell Newschannel 9 that those clogged drains sent more water into the secondary overflow area than expected. 

The question we posed to Mayor John Cook on Tuesday was, why?  Why did the streets flood after the project was completed? 

Mayor Cook says the flood project along Mesa Hills that cost taxpayers more than 1.6 million dollars is not a failure.  Mayor Cook says there is no way to prevent drains from clogging with rocks and mud.  The issue along Mesa Hills, according to the Mayor, is not a lack of maintenance.

"I think our obligation is to make sure that as debris accumulates we clean it out. You we're talking about being able to predict that it was going to happen at that particular location within an hour and it'd be unreasonable to expect anyone to be sitting there waiting to remove boulders out of a culvert with only an hours notice." says Mayor Cook.

Last week we caught crews cleaning up debris blocking the runoff ditch along Mesa Hills after the storm.  Mayor Cook says much of the debris was new and was carried down the mountains by fast moving water.