Dougherty County- A dry front yard is just what Martha Duncan had hoped for. "It started going down yesterday evening and then this morning when I got up this morning it was just gone," she says.
She couldn't even step off her porch Wednesday. "I was scared. I stayed up the whole night. With that water coming through here, I stayed up the whole night. I didn't get no sleep," Duncan says.
Duncan says she stopped worrying when she saw that the water had receded. "Yeah, I got plenty of rest then," she laughs.
But it will be days before Darrel Ealum's Radium Springs Golf Course dries out."It's a lot worse then what I thought it was in the beginning," he says.
Fifteen of his 18 holes have water on them, and ten are completely submerged. "If you look here behind you can see that's all of hole number one and all of number 18," Ealum says.
But Ealum was able to drive to work. The water level on the course and over the road leading to it has dropped at least 18 inches. Still he's worried about the strong current of the Flint that's now flowing across his greens.
"If it does like in '98 it's going to cut a pretty bad furrow there across number one that's going to take some time to repair," Ealum says.
Although water marks on trees in the Flint River are visible public works officials say Albany isn't out of the clear yet.
"We do have a lot of rain coming in so people do need to understand what we were talking about yesterday, the outfalls to the river are still closed," says public works director Phil Roberson says.
That's because the river is covering Albany's storm water outfalls, and opening them now would allow water to flow the opposite way. Portable pumps have been running non-stop since Wednesday in an attempt to move storm water around the city especially at holding ponds that are already full.
"Basically if you've got a holding pond near your house that's already full and you know it doesn't have an outfall and can't go anywhere, then you have to be aware of rising water near your house," Roberson says.
Roberson says those pumps will continue to run non-stop throughout the weekend or at least until outfalls can be reopened. That won't happen until the river falls to 25 feet.
Public works crews will be making sandbags over the next few days. If you need them call Albany public works at (229) 883-6950. Supplies are limited.
Posted at 5:45 PM by elaine.armstrong@walb.com
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 Worldnow and WALB, a Raycom Media Station. 
