Green infrastructure the answer for Frog Hollow residents After years of flooding, constructed wetlands offer relief for neighborhood, savings for city Jennifer Whitson Marketing/Proposal Specialist Bernardin, Lochmueller & Associates, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana
or decades, the City of Indianapolis struggled with how to help the residents of Frog Hollow, a small neighborhood on the near southside. The neighborhood is made up of a cluster of about 150 modest homes surrounded by industrial and commercial buildings. Every time the city received as little as one inch of rain, Frog Hollow’s streets would flood and become unpassable. When the storms were heavier, people moved everything of value up to the higher shelves
in their homes. When storms were downright relentless, there was no stopping the flooding. Frog Hollow Neighborhood Association President Gary Gaskin said many in the neighborhood started giving up. “With flood damage all the time, people stopped trying to fix up their homes,” he said. “Why bother, when it would just get damaged again.” When Mayor Greg Ballard took office in 2008, he heard from Frog Hollow residents and sent a clear
message to the Department of Public Works (DPW): Find a solution.
But there wasn’t a simple answer. Frog Hollow sits on lowland that drains into the White River, which is west of the houses. Highland Creek, which has a peak rate of 400,000 gallons per minute, winds through the neighborhood and it routinely floods. Germania Creek, which has a peak rate of 300,000 gallons per minute, is north of the neighborhood and bypasses the residences. When heavy rains hit, the White River rises and both creeks experience backward flow. DPW and engineering consultants reviewed several solutions, which included everything from cost estimates for buying all the houses to installing additional storm sewers. DPW settled on a project that would cost roughly $5 million and would reroute flow from Highland Creek into Germania Creek via new storm sewers. It wasn’t the ideal solution— Germania Creek is a smaller creek and it was already at capacity. Also, the path chosen would require the City to dig trenches for pipes along Bluff Road, through the busy intersection with Troy Avenue, potentially causing traffic to snarl and requiring very costly relocation of utility poles or natural gas lines.
The Indianapolis Department of Public Works included a constructed wetlands in a stormwater drainage improvement project to slow down runoff and improve water quality. State regulators also counted the effort towards wetland mitigation goals for an unrelated construction project. 130 APWA Reporter
August 2012
In October 2008, Mayor Ballard founded the Office of Sustainability and called on all City departments
