The city of Arnold has taken the first step to solve a flooding issue on St. John’s Church Road.
City Council members voted 6-0 on July 11 to pay up to $195,000 to Great River Engineering of Springfield to provide engineering services for the project. Ward 2 Councilman Brian McArthur and Ward 4 Councilman Butch Cooley were not at the meeting.
Public Works Director Judy Wagner said the approximate half-mile stretch of road between Richardson Road and Jeffco Boulevard has had flooding problems for years.
She said stormwater sometimes runs off the St. John’s Lutheran Church property onto the road and six to 10 inches of water can cover the road.
“When motorists are driving on St. John’s Church Road, they hit that water and who knows what could happen?” Wagner said. “They could hydroplane and lose control of their vehicle. That is what is driving this project to the front, the safety conditions.”
Wagner said Great River Engineering is available now to provide the engineering work, and she expects the company to complete most of it by the fall. Then, the city will use the information from the design to submit a request for a Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) from the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission.
She said grant submissions are due by February 2025.
“We will have a good grasp of what is needed to put into the grant application to meet the February deadline,” she said. “A lot of times when we are designing a project, we find things we were not aware of. This will give us the actual engineering up front so we get a good estimate (for the cost) and more intricate details of what we are going to do in the grant application. They will understand that the city is serious about the project and has already spent X amount of dollars on this project, so the federal government needs to participate in this because it is a high priority for the city.”
Wagner said the city plans to have inlets and culverts installed to resolve the flooding problem.
“That is the design I don’t have the ability to do,” she said of why Arnold hired Great River Engineering. “How are we going to catch the water on the church side and pipe it to the creek to the north?”
The city also will repave the road, install curbing and gutters and improve the sidewalks.
“There could be potentially more walkers if we connect it to the MoDOT (Missouri Department of Transportation) project and cross them over to Linderhof (Drive).”
MoDOT has agreed to pay Pavement Solutions approximately $2.5 million to improve the area where St. John’s Church Road, Linderhof Drive and Jeffco Boulevard intersect and to make the intersection at Hwy. 61-67 and Miller Road East just south of Arnold safer.
MoDOT area engineer Stephen O’Connor said no starting date for the construction had been set as of July 10, but he expects the project to be complete by June 2025.
Wagner said construction of the city’s planned improvements to St. John’s Church Road to alleviate flooding would likely not start until 2026 at the earliest, and maybe not until 2027 if the city has to acquire right-of-ways.
“I think our right-of-way is wide enough, so we may not need to acquire land,” she said. “There is a cemetery and other things there, and that is why I need the design done. If I need a retaining wall to avoid impacting the cemetery, we can put that in the estimate for the project when we apply for the grant.”
Along with improvements to the street, sidewalks and stormwater drainage, Wagner said she will have Great River Engineering design a new controller for the traffic signals at the intersection of Richardson and St. John’s Church roads.
“The controller is old and is not functioning like it should,” she said. “It has been struck by lightning a few times, and we had to rebuild the controller. The signal timing is not holding. I will have them design a new controller and video detection there.”