Neighbors Claim School Construction Swamping Their Homes

Some neighbors around the Flatonia ISD campus say school construction projects in recent years have redirected storm runoff onto their properties.

Jay Kirtley, who owns a historic home north of the school, said the stormwater is slowly destroying his property.

“It’s rotting my house,” Kirtley said. “I’ve paid almost $10,000 on repair work.”

“We’ve always had water, but not to the extent we have now,” said Joe Breads, Kirtley’s neighbor to the east.

Breads says runoff from the school stands on his property and saturates the ground so bad that it has killed several oak trees. Moreover, he said the water runoff makes it almost impossible to further develop his 40-plus acre property at the edge of town.

“They came in last year and put astroturf (on the football field), and then this parking lot used to be grass,” Kirtley said. “Now it’s gravel and impervious cover.”

Kirtley said the school should have performed a site study and drainage survey before construction began. He alleges that if those studies were done, they were completed with faulty or incomplete data. And now, the school plans to build new administration offices on undeveloped space north of the campus. Kirtley and Breads believe it will lead to even more water runoff.

Kirtley and his neighbors conducted their own experiment last year. During a heavy rainfall event, they released dozens of small toy ducks on the school property and watched where they went. Sure enough, Kirtley said, the ducks floated onto their properties.

“There just a lot of dirty dealing going on,” Kirtley said.

Flatonia ISD Superintendent Chris Sodek disagrees with the neighbors.

“Flatonia Independent School District is aware of the water retainage issues reported by a few landowners owning property adjacent to the District’s property,” Sodek said in a statement to the Record. “The District has, on more than one occasion, met with the adjacent landowners who reported these issues. In addition, the District provided the adjacent landowners documents and other information demonstrating that the District’s construction and operations are not the cause of any water retainage issues on their property. Various representatives of the City of Flatonia also met with the adjacent landowners regarding the City’s operations and drainage plan relative to the landowners’ property.”

Sodek said Flatonia ISD followed all applicable regulations and permitting requirements during construction.

“What the community might not be aware of is that there are specific legal requirements the District must meet before commencing construction on District property,” Sodek said. “Specifically, the District must engage design professionals, including an engineer, for any significant construction project. The District engaged design professionals for the construction projects undertaken in 2012, 2019, and 2023. When the work was completed, the District’s design professionals conducted the required inspections and certified that the work was completed in accordance with the specifications for the projects and the standards required by law.”

Sodek said that after the neighbors first reported their issues, the district directed engineers to inspect the school property again.

“The District’s engineers determined that the District’s drainage system is functioning properly and is not contributing to any drainage issues experienced by the adjacent landowners,” Sodek said.

Flatonia’s new city manager, Ray Miller, said he was not intimately familiar with the school’s construction projects because they took place years before he was hired.

“The City has heard those concerns,” Miller said. “And the City has hired an engineering firm to do a drainage study for that area. That just got started. I don’t have any findings to comment on at this point.”

Miller said he did not know when that study would be complete.

In the meantime, Kirtley and Breads said they’re speaking with other neighbors to see if anyone else has been affected by stormwater runoff from the school. They’re also thinking about hiring an attorney to see what, if any, legal action they could take to protect their property.