Midlothian officials want to enlist the financial support of other area agencies to help property owners living near Midlothian Creek, and they’re hoping residents of those areas will chime in to assist the effort.
The village is seeking grants from Cook County and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District to help pay for work they hope will lead stormwater management solutions in areas hardest hit by flooding, especially in 2013 and 2014.
Village officials are gathering information as they prepare applications for a community development block grant from Cook County’s disaster recovery and resilience design/engineering program as well as a grant from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s flood control program.
In the process, officials hope Midlothian residents will provide photographs, newspaper clippings and letters of support to help bolster their appeals.
Village Trustee Kathy Caveney said it can be difficult to get local residents to contribute to this kind of effort when the issue involves flood damage to their homes.
“It’s hard to get people to talk,” She said. “They’re afraid it will give their home a bad reputation as the ‘flood house’ and hurt their property value.”
The county grant is meant to provide money related to damages caused by severe flooding in April and May of 2013. Caveney said damage from those storms, along with a series of flash floods that occurred throughout the spring and summer of the following year, caused lasting damage in Midlothian.
“We had a lot of people who chose to walk away from their homes (because) the flood damage was so severe,” she said.
While the grant applications do not request specific amounts — that is left to the awarding agencies to decide — Caveney said the grant awards also would help pay for engineering studies for flood mitigation work.
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Village officials face a Feb. 23 application deadline for the MWRD grant, while the Cook County grant has a March 9 application deadline.
South Holland-based Robinson Engineering will assist Midlothian in putting together the grant applications, which must include detailed information about the degree to which flooding is a problem for residents living near Midlothian Creek, or in the neighborhoods of Jolly Homes, Bremen Heights and Belly Button Hill.
Jolly Homes is off Hamlin Avenue and 153rd Street behind Bremen High School, while Belly Button Hill is near Kostner Park, 145th Street and Kostner Avenue. The Bremen Heights neighborhood is the area northeast of 147th Street and Cicero Avenue.
Residents willing to assist the effort can contact Caveney at 708-389-0200, or send photographs and letters of support to [email protected].