Despite city fix, storm floods basement

BATAVIA, N.Y. (WIVB) - After a long dry summer, the rain drench landscape on Tuesday, overflowing streams and storm sewers.

While it stormed in Batavia, the streets filled up like a bathtub. What little was able to immediately drain slowly swirled away. And for Kenneth Wolter, he was in full panic mode.

"I just got home from work and my wife, my father-in-law, my boys, were trying their best to defer the water from going down into my basement again from my sidewalk," Wolter said.

Just over a month ago after a very similar storm, News 4 spoke with Wolter, who was pumping floodwater out of his basement after it rushed down his stairway like Niagara Falls.

Back on August 1st, he said, "I'd just like the city to do something about this and get going on it. They can plant flowers and put a new circle in, but they need to take care of the residents on the southside."

He wasn't happy with the city then, and he's sure not happy now.

"It's all backing up again. Because the city, they claimed they fixed [it], which obviously they didn't," Wolter bemoaned.

He says after the last storm, he had to replace his water heater and electrical system and hasn't been paid yet by the insurance company.

"I can't have this keep happening every time it rains."

Some streets flowed like rivers and the water rose to the bellies of parked cars. All the while, Wolter's family on Watson Avenue used snow shovels to try and keep their basement dry, but to no avail.

"Every time it rains, I am deathly afraid that something is going to happen, just like the last storm."

In a city dry for most of the summer, just like most of western New York, it's frustrating for Wolter that when it does rain, it pours.

"They've got to be able to fix this. They can't just sugarcoat it. And that's what they're doing. Sugarcoating it, jumping over the problem, and leaving it up to me," he lamented.

News 4 called the city manager, but our call was not returned. According to Wolter, some of the city's drains are from the 1940s.