T-L Photo/MIRANDA SEBROSKI Martins Ferry council members address issues of flooding and a sewer line collapsing in the city at a meeting Wednesday evening. Service director Scott Porter said that the sewer line collapse is expected to be fixed soon.

MARTINS FERRY– Repairs to roads and houses from heavy rainfall have been of some concern in Martins Ferry.

At a short council meeting on Wednesday, city officials addressed these concerns to see what can be done for residents. Scott Porter, Martins Ferry service director, said that houses between Zane Highway and Fifth street had severe flooding recently due to rain and a sewer line collapsing.

“We started working on the houses and we found that there were root problems and things that are going to need replaced in the alleys there,” Porter said. “We hope to have the main road cleared up (Thursday). Hopefully we will have that all taken care of in no time.”

Council member Rick Rodgers also noted that he had saw sewer workers on the scene of the flooding locations and said they need headsets to be able to communicate with each other.

“I noticed the guys using their personal phones to communicate and yell. This was at nine at night,” Rodgers said. “That is not very wise for safety and certainly not health-wise. They need talkable headsets to talk with each other for better communication.”

Porter said that he noticed this issue too and the problem with this was fixed earlier in the day. He said that there will be three headsets issued to sewer workers to communicate better over the loud noise they experience while doing their jobs.

Road slips have also been an issue in the city, among many other communities in the area. Porter said that it is hard to start work on the slips due to the ground being saturated from precipitation. Rodgers said that he has several estimates for repairs from 2017 on Alumni Road that could be useful, with one amounting to $150,401. Council member Bruce Shrodes said that while getting the estimates are important, it does not fix the overall problem since it continues when there is rain.

“I talked to Ohio Public Works,” Porter said. “Until something falls in, there isn’t any kind of emergency funding available, so we will need to take a look at everything. We just need to figure out how to fix the problem.”

There had also been issues with garbage collection in the city on Wednesday due to the snow, according to Porter. He said that any time there is heavy snow fall that it is harder for the sanitation department to collect garbage from residents. He said that whenever this happens, it will be picked up the following day.

“We will have three packers out,” Porter said. “There will be an extra one for collection. We have to make sure the streets are all clear first. We are also working on having garbage collection at the front of homes instead of alleys. Trucks are doing damage and with the weather we are having, it is making it worse. This is especially for the people who have graveled alleys or very narrow places. We are looking at this for April 1st.”