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The pitter-patter of raindrops that awakened many in Grand Island and Central Nebraska on Thursday morning kept Vern Rempe awake for another reason.
He listened for his sump pump to click on and off.
"There are four and a half minutes between cycles," Rempe said. "This will be a hairy spring."
Rempe lives at 1739 S. Arthur St. an area known as the Warm Slough, the bottom ground of a former river. Like many of his neighbors, he's had trouble with groundwater filtering into his basement.
As of 1 p.m. Thursday, Grand Island had received 1.11 inches of rain that had started to change to snow.
Homeowners in a handful of southern Grand Island subdivisions began circulating a petition seeking city help by creating a dewatering district.
But where exactly the petitions are now is unclear.
Milt Moravek, 2426 W. LaMar Ave., drafted the petition and made several copies. He learned on Thursday that one circulated along Circle Drive is now lost.
"I signed one about two weeks ago," Rempe said of the petition that came through his neighborhood.
But he has no idea how many homeowners have signed the petition, how many don't support the idea of a dewatering district or what the future might hold for getting city help on lowering the groundwater table.
"I'm just going to see what happens with this thing," Rempe said. "But I think, if the city defines (dewatering) boundaries, they will be too large and it won't pass."
Traditionally, all properties in a proposed improvement district rather it be for streets, storm sewer, dewatering or any other infrastructure improvement get a chance to protest a district's creation.
If more than 50 percent of the homeowners protest, the district is not created.
Rempe said that, because the high groundwater table primarily affects homes in a swath across Grand Island on the lowest-lying ground, it's hard to define a large boundary that would capture homes that would truly benefit from a dewatering district.
Instead, Rempe believes a dewatering district of about two blocks wide and two or three blocks long might be best say from LaMar south to nearly Stolley Park and one block either side of Arthur.
"We'd like to put in our own pump," Rempe said. "If we could put it in for $10,000 and each put in $2,000, we could benefit our own area."
The neighborhood would still need assistance from the city on where to discharge the water.
"There's got to be some action taken," Rempe said. "It will take action by the city."
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