Drainage is a recurring issue for VDOT, said Sean Trapani, administrator for the department’s Saluda Residency, but it’s especially challenging in counties such as Mathews that don’t have a local program to address the problem.

In response to recent complaints by Mathews residents about drainage issues in the county, representatives of the Virginia Department of Transportation sat down with the Gazette-Journal last week to discuss the department’s role in dealing with drainage.

Trapani explained that, while it’s VDOT’s job to keep water off roads to prevent traffic accidents and pavement failure, drainage issues in areas that don’t belong to VDOT aren’t the department’s responsibility. If it were proved that the road caused the problem, he said, VDOT would take responsibility.

Property owners have used ditches to drain water from their land since long before there was a public road system, said Trapani. While some residents believe that it’s the department’s job to clean outfall ditches, he said that many outfall ditches run across private property and weren’t originally constructed to deal with road drainage.

In 1932, the Byrd Act gave VDOT authority over most of the county roads that existed at that time, creating the Virginia Secondary Roads System. The state holds prescriptive easements to those roads, said Trapani, meaning that, while the state doesn’t own the roads, it has a right to use and maintain them. After 1932, roads were built with a fee simple right-of-way, he said, so that the road and the property alongside are actually owned by the public.

However, subdivision roads built after the mid-1990s are owned by the locality, said Trapani, and each subdivision has its own stormwater management agreement. Once a subdivision is accepted into the secondary road system, VDOT accepts responsibility only for the roadside ditches, he said. In some cases, the roadside ditches are part of the stormwater management plan for the subdivision and are designed to be wet, holding water until it’s metered out over a period of time.

“There are different rules for each situation,” said assistant residency administrator Joyce McGowan.

When VDOT undertakes a new road project, such as the ones planned for Mathews Main Street or the Gwynn’s Island bridge, it purchases easements for drainage, said Trapani, but only as much drainage as is necessary to keep the project from impacting the roadway. For instance, he said, at Ward’s Corner in Mathews, VDOT improved a long drainage ditch that cuts northward through land that’s adjacent to Route 198. The department has a fee simple right to maintain the roadside ditch and an easement to maintain about half the length of the drainage ditch, he said, but would need to obtain permission to perform maintenance on the remaining half of the drainage ditch.

Ron Peaks, the new maintenance operations manager for the Saluda residency, said that roads are designed to sustain a 25-year storm. But weather is very localized, he said. A weather forecast calling for a 30 percent chance of rain doesn’t mean there’s a 30 percent chance that it will rain, but that 30 percent of the area under discussion can expect rain. A big storm can cover a large area, but “you can get pretty extensive rain at your house and none at mine,” he said. If roads were required to sustain anything higher than a 25-year storm, said Peaks, they would have to be “so overdesigned locally in small areas that nobody could afford them.”

“They provide a certain level of protection,” he said, “but that level can be exceeded with rainfall in a local area.”

This can be compounded by tidal action, said Peaks, since the tide can be so high that fresh water in creeks and streams has no place to go and thus backs up onto property and roads.

Peaks, who previously served as zoning administrator for Gloucester County, said that localities across the state are coming up with programs to deal with drainage issues. Some are looking at handling stormwater as a utility, he said, with businesses and residents billed for maintenance based on the amount of impervious area on their property. Some cities have been legally obligated to handle stormwater runoff for a number of years, he said, and have already instituted billing for stormwater utilities.

Mathews County once had a program to help residents maintain their outfall ditches, said Trapani. The now-defunct Mathews County Transportation Safety Commission would accept applications from residents who had ditches that needed cleaning, get permission from the property owners involved, prioritize the projects, and have inmates handle much of the ditch cleaning. If the job was too big for inmates, he said, the county would apply for revenue-sharing funds to help pay for VDOT to clean the ditches.

Some counties, such as York and James City counties, budget funds to help with cleaning outfall ditches, he said.

What other localities do

A citizen brochure on drainage issues written by the York County Stormwater Advisory Committee states that the county sees stormwater management as a partnership between “the County, Virginia Department of Transportation, homeowners associations, and individual homeowners.” The brochure asks for active support from residents, including such simple actions as “keeping drainage ditches free of leaves or notifying the proper agency of a blocked drainage pipe.”

The brochure reminds residents that ditches that run perpendicular to a road are the responsibility of whatever entity holds an easement on the ditch—either the county, a homeowner’s association or VDOT. It provides advice on how to keep the ditches clean, on preparing for storms, and on cleaning up after a storm. It also explains that the county accepts complaints about drainage problems and does the research to determine who is responsible for correcting any such problem.

James City County has a drainage improvement program handled through its Stormwater Division whereby it provides technical assistance and some financial assistance for the design and implementation of improvements to stormwater infrastructure. A proposed project must be entirely within the county and outside the VDOT right-of-way and have a drainage easement. In addition, the applicant must show that efforts have been made by the private sector to solve the problem. The division prioritizes and schedules the projects.

Trapani said the maintenance issue is not budgetary, but a matter of responsibility and ownership. He said the Saluda residency has the money, personnel and equipment for maintenance of ditches for which it is responsible.

Virginia’s control of its secondary road system is unusual. According to a 1998 study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council, only four other states have such control. In 45 states, counties and towns are responsible for their local roads, paying for them through taxes and fees. The study is available online at http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/37000/37000/37019/98-r29.pdf.