Things seemed fine at first, said 14-year Ludlow resident Ginger Roberto, after last week’s heavy rains cleared up.
But then…
“I heard this noise, this huge noise, so I kind of wandered off my front porch looking for it. And it was the water coming down off the hill,” Roberto said. “It sounded like waterfalls.”
Roberto lives just across the street from the hillside, which serves as the main access point for Cityview Station, a Fischer Homes development that’s been in the works since 2021. The access point is on Highway Avenue.
Roberto raced back inside to grab her phone and record the muddy water rolling down the hill and pooling under the overpass leading to the center of town. The video shows hapless drivers either stopping or attempting to cross.
Walk down Ludlow today, and most of the water has receded. However, traces of last week’s flooding are still present in the mud and debris on the ground. Earth-moving machinery has since resumed its work atop the hill.
The greater Cincinnati area experienced 1.68 inches of rain on Tuesday, only a little bit short of the region’s single-day record of 1.92 inches in 1977, according to the National Weather Service. Ludlow wasn’t the only place in the region that got hit; Cincinnati’s Columbia Tusculum neighborhood, for instance, saw the flooding of several homes. But for residents like Roberto, Tuesday’s flooding shined a light on perils of building in the Northern Kentucky region.
“I was afraid it was going to eventually come on over here into my yard,” Roberto said, “which was my concern up front with this development when they started taking all the vegetation off that hill.”
Northern Kentucky’s hilly topography is an ongoing issue for both developers and residents, as it can present hazards in the form of land slippage and flooding when builders begin moving earth and clearing vegetation. That vegetation serves as a natural buffer that can slow the flow of water down a slope.
A 2006 study from Northern Kentucky University and the Kentucky Geological Survey states that the region’s geography, the demand for development and periods of heavy rainfall “have combined to create an environment that is highly susceptible to slope instability. As a result, landslides have a significant social and economic impact on the northern Kentucky – southwestern Ohio region and the costs of landslide prevention and remediation in this area reportedly are among the highest in the nation.”
Development isn’t the only factor, though. Flooding in both Ludlow and along Kentucky Route 8, which leads from Ludlow into Boone County, has been an ongoing problem for years.
“This is not an abnormal event for this section of road; it just isn’t,” said Ludlow City Administrator Scott Smith.
One particularly bad instance of flooding took place in 2019, Smith said, before Cityview Station’s construction had even begun. It led to the flooding of the underpass, the closure of Sleepy Hollow Road and Kentucky Rt. 8 as well as flooding of the police department and municipal building.
Smith attributes the flooding less to the development and more to the city’s aging sewer infrastructure, which he argued was inadequate for handling these sorts of heavy rain events.
“If you have an outdated infrastructure, I would venture to say that your roads, your curbs, your drainage is probably really your problem, not the development that’s going in there,” Smith said.
Smith claimed that much of that problem was out of the city’s direct control, as many of the roads and sewer systems were managed and maintained by state agencies like the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and Sanitation District 1, or SD1.
SD1 is currently in the process of updating the region’s combined sewer systems, which have a tendency to fill up faster than more modern sewer systems as they carry both waste water and storm water. They aim to have everything in their jurisdiction up to date by 2040.
Chris Cole, the director of enterprise communications for SD1, told LINK nky that “runoff at a construction site isn’t directly related to [sewer system] mitigation. We do regulate sites to ensure that regional stormwater regulations are being met, but that’s different than our system overflow mitigation work.”
Cole directed LINK nky to SD1’s information on their sewer update initiative called Clean H2O40, which has a map showing recorded combined sewer overflows in the region, among other information. Affected areas include Ludlow, Covington, Newport, Bellevue and Dayton, among others.
Whether it’s due to outdated infrastructure or development or some combination thereof, Roberto said the flooding of the underpass last week was the worst she’s ever witnessed.
“I’ve seen all the storms, and I’ve seen all the backups and everything that go down the street and ended up backing up that drain down under the underpass,” Roberto said, “and I’ve never seen it that bad.”
In an email statement to LINK nky, Fischer Homes said, “By late Tuesday evening and thanks to the quick action by the City of Ludlow, Highway Avenue was reopened and the impacted area was cleared. The construction site has since been inspected and there is no evidence of slope failure.
“Fischer Homes is taking steps to add to the compliant control measures that are already in place. Fischer Homes will continue to monitor and inspect the site pursuant to local stormwater regulations.”