Delivered to 15,000 Plainfield "doorsteps" Monday, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Cedar Brook floods after storm


Soccer fields yesterday, looking toward Stelle Avenue from Randolph Road.
 
Except for those who live in or travel through the Cedar Brook Park area, most Plainfielders are probably blissfully unaware of the engineering marvel that keeps Plainfield from getting flooded when rainstorms like yesterday's hit the city.


Schematic shows flood-prone areas in blue.

An enormous storm sewer gathers runoff which rises in the First Ward after rainstorms, channeling it southwestward through the city, underneath Berckman Street to the south side of the railroad tracks eventually passing both Evergreen and Plainfield High schools to pour into the Cedar Brook channel behind the high school, spilling into Cedar Brook Park.


Here the brook passes under Stelle Avenue bridge, which it sometimes spills over.

The flooding of the soccer fields and the cricket pitch help make sure that homes elsewhere in the city are not flooded.

Am including a couple of pix taken during and after yesterday afternoon's cloudburst.



 
-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

GOAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rob said...

Cedar Brook is an asset to the city in so many ways...Collectively, as a community, this asset needs to be better taken care of.

Tom said...

Those who remember the flood of 1973 saw this in action. East Third St. was a raging river from Terrill Rd and made a left turn at Richmond street and followed straight to Cedar Brook. All of the streets/bldgs in the water's path were heavily flooded.

We were told this was an old creek bed that Plainfield was built on.