Residents and local officials discussed the water wall at Shay Buettner’s Delphos residence Wednesday.
Jacob Espinosa | The Lima News
DELPHOS — Shay Buettner said she is just happy someone is going to fix the water wall that is deteriorating alongside her Delphos home.
Allen County Commissioner Cory Noonan said the county is responsible for the petition ditch program, and that required them to respond to a petition from Buettner to maintain the flow of water that goes between the Delphos homes.
“When there’s any type of obstructions, the county engineers drainage department will come out and remedy that and take care of it,” he said. “We have a situation here where a wall looks like it’s going to fall in some time. Once it falls, we will be responsible for cleaning it, and we have been discussing whether to wait for it to fall and be a safety hazard or to be proactive.”
Buettner said she was going to resort to asking for help from the neighborhood if the area, which has produced holes, divots and a dangerous fence situation, remained the same.
“I have a 95-pound dog that I tie up out back, and he needs space so hopefully we can at least salvage my fence,” she said. “I just don’t want anyone to fall into the creek. I’m just glad it’s going to get fixed, and we can be done with everything.”
Noonan said the commissioner’s office was able to get a quote and came out to the site to discuss the matter with Buettner.
“We wanted to come to some type of resolve on what the homeowner would like,” he said. “Fortunately, they agreed to begin before it falls in. It’s a little outside of the practice that we usually do, but one way or the other, it is going to end up in the water.”
The work will involve going all the way down to bedrock and stagger blocks up to seven feet.
“I can live with it,” Buettner said. “I’m going to lose three feet of my yard back there, but I guess I don’t have much say-so in it either. I don’t want to pay taxes on it, but I guess it’s better than having to fix it myself.”
Buettner just hopes the wall does not fall before it gets fixed next spring.
Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399.
