Letter: Thanks To ITID For Assistance

I would like to extend my thanks and compliments to the Indian Trail Improvement District for their professionalism and expertise in resolving a street drainage issue on 69th Street North.

Recently I had one of the unfortunate examples of the types of disputes that arise between neighbors who share a public street. The issue involved the storm runoff from their long paved driveway and the resulting pooling on the street directly in front of their driveway and extending east to Avocado. This created an obstacle course of potholes and overall slop after any intense rain storm.

After I first asked my neighbor three times to correct this problem before we enter another rainy season, I was finally told by the homeowner’s wife in no uncertain terms that if the problem bothered me so much to “take it up with Indian Trail.”

So I did. I asked ITID to inspect the problem and decide on a solution. Which leads to my thanks to ITID and especially Shaun for their cool response and diplomatic problem-solving expertise in the face of my neighbor’s agitated reaction to ITID’s investigation.

ITID discovered a collapsed culvert pipe (a clear code violation), which compromised the entire down slope of ITID’s drainage system extending east of the problem driveway to Avocado and west to the cross canal, and exposing a problem needing to be fixed before hurricane season. The “no-choice” solution requiring the owner to replace the damaged culvert pipe per code and re-grading the driveway with the required “crown,” plus ITID’s own contribution of a couple loads of strategically dumped shell rock on 69th Street North will provide a badly needed fix.

Neighbors don’t like forcing issues that involve other neighbors paying the cost of fixing problems that spillover onto public property. But neither do we like to pay the cost of front-end alignments, tire damage or dealing with the slop of an obvious problem that needed fixing. So again, a voice of thanks to ITID for their prompt and professional response under less-than-ideal circumstances. And hopefully the homeowner will make the required repairs without further delay.

Richard DuCharme, The Acreage