ST. CHARLES, Mo. – Residents in a St. Charles neighborhood are angry and frustrated over what they say was a lack of action by the city that left them more vulnerable to terrible flooding last July.

The storm culvert along Hawthorn Avenue is too small. The city vowed to fix it, but ran into several issues that delayed the project. Problems like COVID and the supply chain issues.

When historic flooding hit in July 2022, the neighborhood was still stuck with the same bad culvert. As a result, streets and the insides of homes were badly flooded.

“They are fixing the culvert and the creek up from where the water runs down this way, but it’s rolling faster, and it’s getting bottlenecked, so on July 26 we got hit,” said resident Michele Brauch. “This whole section got hit. My entire basement got flooded. I had sewer back up. I lost two vehicles”

Other residents, like Michael Cruz, are just as upset.

“People that lived here 15 years ago and they had the same problem, and the culvert was supposed to get fixed then,” he said. “We’re talking over 15 years that it’s been an issue.”

St. Charles Mayor Dan Borgmeyer denied the city is dragging its feet, saying they’re spending a million dollars to fix the problem.

“Oh yes, there’s a problem. In fact, there’s two of them down there that they’re working on,” he said. “The problem was they have to be individually made, so that process took almost a year for them to get the equipment and make it in that time. But these culverts have to be handmade. So between COVID and the backlog and getting the materials, that was a problem, so they just informed me the other day that they’re ready to go now.”

The city plans to get started by March. It will take several months to fix the culvert.

Residents like Renee Borgmann hope there are no more delays.

“I know that things come up, but we had to deal with the fallout from that,” she said.