On To business Department...

Ok , with that hot air out of the way, Mr. Dennis did post and interesting piece about permeable concrete and some drainage problems, in this case on Humboldt Street in the south end. You can read it here.

Now while I don't think those of us that live and own homes here are lab rats and I don't even come close to being a city engineer, I do know something about temperatures in this climate of Peoria and of rats. Our rats here in the south end are some of the cleanest and best groomed rats one will ever see.  In fact, I saw one the other day, half the size of a dog with a beautiful gold chain around his neck.

I digress.... Let's see, concrete that is pervious or allows water to drain through it. It seems that Barber, our Public Works Director sees this as a neat fix to the lack of sidewalks and storm sewers on one south side street.  Even a poster on Billy's site thought it was neat and was considering doing a driveway with the stuff.

Well, even the simplest minded person who has lived here any length of time knows that it gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer and during the spring and fall, it can change very quickly from one extreme to the other.  In fact, I have always said that this is the only place on Earth where one can die in the blizzard while mowing the lawn.  That said, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see that after a season or two of freeze thaw, freeze, thaw, then heat, this concrete will break up.  In fact, isn't this how they make gravel?

If we lived down south where the climate rarely fell below freezing, this might make sense.  Here in Peoria?  This is just nuts and Billy is right, this is being rolled out like the City gives a damn about drainage in the south end.  This is truly putting lipstick on a pig.  What is needed is storm sewers with curbs for water run off and with curbs, usually sidewalks.  This could have been done in some part with the stimulus money but our councilman and his cohorts decided a roof on a non profit building was more important.  I wonder what cocktail party that decision was made at.  That alone is hard to believe that a "shovel ready" project like sidewalks in a badly needed and neglected part of Peoria was pre-empted by a frickin roof on a privately owned building for a not for profit group. 

Try this type of fix in Rolling Acres where drainage has been an issue for years.  That would go over like a concrete cloud but those "poor" folks in the south end need help so let's pass this shit on to them.  That'll shut them up.  Maybe lab rats is a good analogy,

Mr. Barber, pack your concrete where the sun doesn't shine.  While Humbodlt street has problems because, and get this, LACK OF SIDEWALKS, CURBS, AND  STORM SEWERS, so does many of the other streets in the south end.  Griswold, Latrobe, Fremont, Antoinette, Hayes, Arlington, Kneer, Folkers, and Grinnell just to name a few streets in the south end.  All these streets have the exact same drainage problems Humboldt Street has.

Mr. Gulley, where are you?  That grant you got last summer for sidewalks on Antoinette Street between Griswold and Laramie hasn't helped at all as far as drainage but then that wasn't why they were slapped in was it?  They were slapped in. I invite anyone to come by and have a look on how they did this installation of new sidewalks without a single foot of curbing or without a single storm sewer drain.  Just plowed through our yards, laid a concrete sidewalk, patched driveways with rock or asphalt, put down the original dirt and rock they dug up, threw straw on it with grass seed and they were gone.

We now have a mud slide when it rains, and all that grows out of the rocky dirt and straw is garbage truck tracks, beer bottles, and McDonald wrappers.  Gulley, you should be whipped for this.  Lab rats indeed.