We live on the east side of the Great Dismal Swamp canal, on land originally part of the swamp. The canal drained this area in the early 1800's and it's been used as agricultural land ever since. It's flat as my washboard stomach (You believe that!?) We moved here on Memorial Day, 2000 and didn't have any major problems with floodwater for the first few years. Even Hurricane Isabel's flooding wasn't so bad. Here's a shot from 2006, our house is on your left. (That's Candy out front. She's a bit of a lucky gal. Three years ago, just before Christmas, she had a 10 pound tumor removed from her spleen. Now she's 12 and slowing down, but at least she's still here.)

Three years ago, or so, they finished the new highway 17, which used to run along the edge of the canal. Since then, flooding has been a major problem. The farmland behind us used to drain into the canal, apparently, and can no longer go out that way. So floodwater collects right here in our yard, where two drainage culverts are supposed to drain into a ditch heading eastward, but the ditch hasn't been cleared out for half a century, because the ditch machine broke down 20 years ago and was never replaced. That old ditch is so clogged it can't take the extra water. Here's a picture of my raised bed garden, water so high you can't see the railroad ties around each bed.

Here's the stable

Okay, you might think that's bad, but you can see it's only just above ankle deep. The last couple of floods, it's been knee deep. Can you imagine walking through brown water with horse turds and chicken manure floating? Not only that, our septic tank goes under water, so you can imagine how much disgusting liquid that adds.

Three years ago, we called the city, as did many of our neighbors, but got no response. Not only did they ignore our plight, but they cleared and dug out the ditches out farther up West Road, two miles away, where there's never been the slightest flooding. I contacted the local paper's "Pilot Warrior," also known as John Warren and he got on the city. So what did they do? First two city workers showed up and painted a couple of arrows on the road. A few days later, two more guys arrived and shoveled a tiny bit of muck from the entrance of the culverts. When John Warren found out, he raised hell. This time, they sent out a sheriff's work crew (Cool Hand Luke and the boys) who cut down bushes in the ditch across the road and shoveled muck from the ditch up into the field. They worked 4 days, but only got about 10 feet of ditch cleared. We figured that was the best we'd get and hoped it would help. After the last flood, when everyone complained again, they sent out a huge "vacuum" truck. The crew had been ordered to clean the ditches under driveways, but no one had told them to clean the main culvert. They were good, conscientious guys, though, so they cleaned it when I asked. I've since heard (from an un-named source I don't want to get into trouble) that the guy in charge of Chesapeake Services said, "If those people didn't want to get flooded, they shouldn't have moved into the swamp area." Nice, huh? How come the city issued building permits?

Anyway, here's my point. George Washington surveyed this area in the 1700's and figured out how to drain the swamp with a canal, which also allowed lumber to float to market. It drained all the land east of the canal, as they'd calculated. A road was created by the soil dug from the swamp and placed alongside.  In the 2000's, the road-engineers decided to move the highway a mile off the swamp, because they would have had to fill in more swamp to accomodate 4 lanes. So what's the first thing they had to do? They had to fill in swamp, raising it several feet above the surrounding area to provide a roadbed. This blocked the natural drainage set up centuries ago by the early settlers, who had no computers to design the drainage. Progress is wonderful.

Also, the city can't clear ditches because their machine no longer works. But guess what? Let a developer decide to put in a neighborhood, they'll suddenly find the machinery.

Come on, Chesapeake, it's so bad out here that these two young geese came in through our door to avoid drowning in a flood.

I wouldn't lie, would I?