Nov 26, 2018
William Dolan

CROWN POINT — Lake County Surveyor Bill Emerson Jr. said his office saved taxpayers more than $433,000 this year by being the county’s own plumber.

Emerson said the county’s drainage crews removed tons of fallen trees, beaver dams and other debris from county ditches that would otherwise have caused flooding.

Emerson said his office manages more than 600 miles of waterways in unincorporated Calumet Township and south county outside of its suburban cities and towns.

The ditches are the product of more than a century of publicly financed drainage of wetlands for agricultural, residential and commercial development.

Some 8 percent of Lake County is designated wetlands by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It used to be much more. The state’s surveyors reported in 1816, the year Indiana became a state, that about half the surface area of Northwest Indiana ponded during six months of the year.

These wetlands were drained by open ditches and underground field tile networks to make agriculture possible. In recent decades, farm fields have given way to building roofs, streets and other impervious surfaces that quickly concentrate stormwater into the lowest ground.

Emerson said debris typically collects in sharp bends in these ditches as well as constrictions where water has to flow through drainage tiles beneath roads.

He said the office examines aerial photography the county typically uses for tax assessments to find blockages in heavily wooded areas that cannot be seen from roads.

He said the county currently employs four workers and as many as eight during the summer to do this clearing. “We do have a winch to remove the larger logs, but it’s mostly by chainsaws and going in there by hand,” Emerson said.

“The estimated cost to hire private contractors to perform these tasks so far in 2018 would be $499,000 and our office has paid our seasonal drainage crew $65,367.75 as of Oct. 25. This is a savings of $433,632 for Lake County taxpayers this year alone.”