Overnight Monday into Tuesday morning, Sikeston received about three inches of rain, a significant amount in a community that is flat with little terrain. While the rain can cause some issues on Sikeston streets, residents can help by keeping storm grates clear.

With the heavy rains, the City of Sikeston Street Department was out Monday night and early Tuesday morning, monitoring flood prone areas and dealing with storm damage, including trees that were blocking roadways. One of the biggest issues facing the Street Department, is storm grates that are clogged.

“Most of the water makes its way to storm grates which makes its way to an underground pipe system,” said Sikeston Public Works Director Jay Lancaster. “For some of the older areas, the pipes were not designed to hold some of the water that is getting to them now. We’re having to go around where we can and update things and then (the water) makes its way out through a series of ditches in town.”

Lancaster said to prepare and address flooding issues in Sikeston, employees are constantly making sure storm grates are clear. However, that is a time-consuming process. Currently, the street department has eight employees and there are 1,600 storm grates in Sikeston.

One thing Lancaster said the community can do to help is to adopt a storm grate near them and keep an eye on it.

“One thing people can do to help with flooding is as much as possible keep leaves and trash out of the street,” Lancaster said. “Those things block up grates and then get in pipes and cause clogs. We have to locate them and clean them out with the equipment we have.”

Often when a street that typically doesn’t flood, takes on water, Lancaster said it is likely to be a storm grate issue.

Darren Martin, Sikeston street supervisor, said they also run a street sweeper that helps keep leaves and debris out of the stormwater system and there is also the leaf program, that just restarted in November. The city’s new leaf vacuum truck, that helps keep leaves out of the stormwater system, picked up 760 cubic yards of leaves between the first of November and the end of December.

While the leaf program is complete, Lancaster said if anyone does have any significant leaves that need to be removed, and they are ready for removal, they can make an appointment to have them picked up by the leaf vacuum truck by calling 573-475-3732 between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.

The street department also routinely cleans out pipes that have a suspicion of having clogs in them. Another thing they do on a regular basis is mop out ditches that carry the water away from town.

Lancaster said the city will have a large ditch clean out project this spring to address most, if not all, of the major ditches that carry water away from town.

A large portion of Sikeston drains its water through the St. John’s system, consisting of the of the main channel and two laterals – Lateral B to the west of the St. John’s main channel and Lateral C to the west of St. John’s main channel.

Lateral C has caused some concern because once it gets south of Sikeston, it feeds to an area that isn’t in the best shape. Lancaster said the city recently reached an agreement with the St. John’s Bayou Basin Drainage District where this will be cleaned out between Highway 60 and the St. John’s main channel.

“If we’ve got it clean in town and it hits a beaver dam going out of town that doesn’t help anything,” Lancaster said.

Even though the street department makes every effort to keep all streets from flooding, there are still issues residents face in some areas, and work is being done to fix those problems.

“The city is currently studying some of our more flood prone areas right now to develop improvement strategies we hope to implement in 2023,” Lancaster said.

While keeping storm grates clear will help the city, residents can also help just by providing information. If anyone lives in an area where the grates may be clear, but they suspect there may be slow drainage, contact the city at 573-475-3732 so the problem can be investigated before a rain hits.

“Keep us informed,” Lancaster said. “We can’t be everywhere at once. If people can give us good information early, and keep their storm grates clean, we can all work together to keep damage to a minimum.”