ST. LOUIS – Sunday night’s flash floods caused concern for the city of St. Louis as a manhole abruptly popped near Vandeventer Avenue and Foundry Way.
“We saw four inches in some parts of the city in just two hours; that’s a month’s worth of rain in just two hours,” said Bess McCoy with the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District.
The amount of rain that fell at such a fast pace overwhelmed the manhole, according to McCoy.
“The water rushed into the sewer faster than the air. Inside, it could escape, and that created a buildup of pressure that blew open the manhole here,” McCoy explained.
McCoy said the system they have in place is built to handle massive amounts of water, even in this particular area where the sewer is 100 feet underground.
“The system here actually could handle the amount of water that we saw,” McCoy said. “It was the speed at which it rushed in that caused that to happen; it created a buildup of air pressure but actually popped the manhole.”
McCoy said changes in St. Louis’ weather patterns will soon cause the city’s systems to adjust as well.
“It’s so important that we do stuff like this to make our system more resilient, make it more climate ready, and that’s why we’re investing so much into bringing our sewer system into the 21st century,” McCoy said. “It’s just that when we see that type of intense rain, we need better ventilation, and that’s what we’re working toward.”
McCoy said the manhole was repaired on Sunday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
