By Shannon Lukens.
Water is almost always draining through the alley between Oak and Pine, where the overflow parking is for Old Town Hot Springs. It then runs through the employee parking lot for the post office, down 3rd, and then through the 4-way stop behind the post office. Steamboat Radio reached out to the City of Steamboat Springs to find out why the water is always flowing in the road there.
Jon Snyder is the Public Works Director. He says it is groundwater drainage from an illegal sump pump that was installed in a house in the alley. He says the City of Steamboat Springs is working with the homeowners on a solution to the illegal sump pump discharge, adding that it is destroying some public infrastructure in the alley and down 3rd Street. Snyder says the drainage has been happening for about three years. It started when a new house was built in the alley there and they added a basement.
Snyder says it is worse in the spring, but that it also has happened in the winter which causes the water to turn to ice where it is draining.
Here are some pictures taken today (Monday, June 13, 2022).