AFFTON, Mo. – An immigrant family with a business in Affton in South County calls the You Paid For It Team for help dealing with flooding woes that’s not their fault. But they’ll have to pay.
The damage from flooding is tens of thousands of dollars for business owner Elsa Scholla, who run their business along Gravois Avenue.
“The problem is, during the storm happened on May 14, we got flooded. All the parking lot, all backside of the building property. I filed a claim with MSD, and it looks like it’s been a failure of the MSD system collector. We’ve got tons of damage on the backside of the parking lot.”
Scholla says she turned to MSD for help. Estimates say the total damages are around $49,000.
“I filed a claim with MSD, and they brought an engineer, and they say, ‘Sorry,'” recalled Scholla. When that didn’t work, they turned to St Louis County.
So I file a claim with the county because we’re paying taxes in St Louis County, and they say, ‘No deal. Go with MSD.’ I file a claim with my insurance building insurance, and they say, ‘No, it’s not an insurance issue.'”
The water was so powerful it broke off the end of their parking lot. A big expense to replace it, they say blocked storm sewer inlets are the cause of the problem.
“The water was so high the trash cans were actually floating on the parking lot. At that moment I realized I’m like many this is not good,” said Scholla.
The You Paid For It team started digging. We started with MoDOT. But in a surprise, they pointed the finger elsewhere. They provided in a statement, which said, in part:
“The business owner attributed the flooding to a storm drain [inlet] on Gravois Road, expressing belief that it did not properly manage the volume of water it was expected to handle. Inlets on Gravois Road, like all state highways, fall under the jurisdiction of the Missouri Department of Transportation.”
Upon conclusion of our investigation, we promptly communicated our findings to the customer and recommended reaching out to MoDOT to address their concerns.
MoDOT said this in a statement when You Paid For It questioned them:
“Mr. Davis,
This claim has been received and is currently being investigated. Once complete MoDOT will follow up with the customer.”
The family is hoping this is resolved soon. St. Louis County is coming after them.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Scholla. “The county is sending me letter I had letter from St. Louis County saying the violation code number, this is the code number, you have to take care of your property. So I am in this situation now.”