GULF SHORES, Ala. – City officials had the right information to make the right decisions on a flood prone neighborhood back in the 1990s.

But the officials who most needed to know it weren’t privy to it, an attorney representing citizens in a recent lawsuit said. The city recently agreed in January to buy 27 of the homes in the stricken area, but had to go to court over who was due how much.

The trial on 17 of those claims began in early April and ended last week with the city ordered to pay $883,000 to 24 plaintiffs. Some were couples who owned properties and some were people who suffered flood damage when they previously owned property in the area.

The houses are in an area bordered by Canal Road on the north, East Second Street on the west, 10th Street and Gulf State Park on the east and East 21st Street and Gulf State Park on the south.

Another trial in the same lawsuit – the judge split the case into two trials according to plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Ryan – will involve another 10 properties.

“The group that we went to trial with recently were the people that live on the north side of 21^st Avenue and two people that lived in Tree Line Subdivision,” Ryan said. “The remaining people, the 14 that are remaining, are from the south side of 21^st Avenue.”

An offer to settle the claims was made before the trial began, Ryan said, but the city turned it down. The judgment ended up paying more than settlement offer.

“We had made a global offer for people in this trial and the people who had yet to go to trial,” Ryan said. “The results were proportionally more than the plaintiffs would have settled for. We’d hoped to have this settled a long time ago and not go through a three-week trial.”

Currently city officials and attorneys are huddling to decide what the next steps will be.

“We’re going to be filing post-judgment motions with the trial court first trying to address some issues,” an attorney for the city, Andy Rutens, said. “Depending on how those motions are resolved there may be an appeal.”

Ryan has heard there may be an appeal.

“The evidence and liability are pretty overwhelming,” Ryan said.

Ryan says this saga began back in the late 1980s when an engineering firm, Woolpert, was hired to do a citywide study of storm drainage.

“Essentially all of the storm water drainage for city were mapped out and individually analyzed and they then sort of knew where the inadequate areas where and how much,” Ryan said. “It was a very in-depth study that was completed in 1990.”

For the area in question, the study determined that the Fifth Street drainage ditch provided drainage for an area of 230 acres. The two 24-inch pipes emptying in the canal would be able to handle 6.6 percent of the water if a there were a “10-year, one-hour rain event,” Ryan said.

“That’s another way of saying you’re about 94 percent undersized,” Ryan said.

Three separate times during the 1990s, Ryan said, the city applied for Community Development Block Grants to develop the area and each time the city was denied.

In the late 1990s, developers became interested in the area, the city extended 21^st Avenue and issued subdivision permits and building permits.

It was at that point, Ryan says, when the city could have prevented the current flooding problems and lawsuit.

“FEMA gives you an ordinance and says pass it, you must adopt these standards if you’re going to participate in FEMA,” Ryan said. “What that says is if an area is not shown on a FEMA flood insurance map as a special flood hazard, but due to an engineering study or local knowledge of flooding it is subject to flooding in a 100-year flood event, all new structures must have a finished floor elevation meaning the floor of the living space must be at least three feet above the adjacent grade.”

The city, Ryan says, had enough information on hand to make that designation and either didn’t act on it or didn’t make it available to the right people.

“One department didn’t share the information with the department responsible for updating flood maps and issuing building permits,” Ryan said. “Now, interestingly enough, one of the people that testified in the trial was Josh Harris who used to be the flood plain manager at the time all this area was opened up for development in the late 1990s.

“Josh testified … the Woolpert study information about the flooding risk and the CDBG grant application information that detailed the risk of flooding in those grant applications, was never shared with him.”

Harris also testified, according to Ryan, that had he had the information in his hands, he would have taken action.

 “He would have one, saw a moratorium on development in that area until the maps could be updated and the restrictions regarding elevation could be applied,” Ryan said. “And, two, he would have designated it as a special flood hazard area.

“But both Chuck Hamilton, the public works director, and Josh Harris, the former building official and flood plain manager, both agreed that this should have never happened and these houses should have never flooded.”

Ryan said Hamilton was also called to testify, had the vital information.

“He agreed it was a gamble to allow the development of the area without first ensuring that the storm water drainage system was adequate,” Ryan said.