Flooding leaves thousands of dollars in damage for businesses on Dixie Highway

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - There is thousands of dollars in damage at businesses on Dixie Highway following rain and flash flooding on Friday.

Scott Blair, the owner of Scott’s Handyman Service in the 9500 block of Dixie Highway, says the damage wouldn’t have happened if a nearby drainage ditch had been maintained and cleared.

”We pay more for drainage than we do for our drinking water and when we have to deal with this, that’s pretty sad,” Blair said.

He says the overgrown, blocked up drainage ditch has been causing problems for a while, but it’s never caused a major setback like what happened Friday.

”We were actually out working and got a phone call from a friend that was passing by on Dixie and he was seeing our trash cans floating out in the parking lot,” Blair said.

However, it wasn’t just Blair’s garbage cans that went for a swim. He said had up to three feet of water rush through his store. Water seeped under the laminate and into the walls, as it took everything in the shop and scattered it, devastating the business. He had just redone the floors and was getting ready to put in carpeting, but now, it’s all ruined.

This is the first storefront he’s owned since starting his business in 2007 and he was just starting to bounce back from the COVID-19 shutdown.

”You’re talking $20,000 or more just in repairs and tools and materials and stuff that has gotten damaged,” Blair said.

His business isn’t the only one underwater. His neighbor Eddie Lawrence’s tattoo shop also has to close for a few days, though he was completely booked with appointments. He said he now has to wait until he can pump water out of the basement and get the air conditioning fixed before he can open back up.

”After COVID, this is just another thing that is costing us money,” Lawrence said, adding the closure impacts his artists more than it does him. They had to reschedule all of their appointments for the weekend.

The setback could have been avoided had the ditch just been cleared, Lawrence said.

”Everybody knows we keep calling, calling, calling on that ditch, telling them to trim it down,” he said.

Blair says the Metropolitan Sewer District reportedly can’t maintain the ditch because of erosion, and an MSD spokesperson told WAVE 3 News they are looking into the issue.

”We’re not receiving the service that I feel like we should be,” Blair said. “We’re expected to file it on our insurance, and also that’s going to cause there’s our insurance to go up higher, if not just get canceled, I just think it’s really wrong. I think somebody ought to be held accountable for it.”

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