‘What the heck?’: Woman says construction site runoff ended up in her yard, pool

CHARLOTTE — It was pouring recently and the mud flowed. It got past Cindy Hart’s fence in NoDa, into her yard, and into her pool.

“You’re like, ‘Oh my God. What the heck?’” she told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke she said to herself.

She says she has a cleaning robot in her pool, but Stoogenke couldn’t see it through the murky water.

Hart says the culprit was the construction project behind her property. The Drakeford Company is building townhomes there and it’s been mostly dirt recently.

“My property has essentially become their floodplain, so that’s not OK. That’s not what any of us bargained for,” she said.

Hart says she contacted the City which cited the developer and ordered it to make improvements, including seed, straw, and fixing the silt fence. The City told the builder to do it all by Friday last week or face fines of up to $5,000 per day.

It looks like the company complied. “I think they’re making an effort and I appreciate that,” Hart said.

The owner of The Drakeford Company told Stoogenke his team was in the wrong, that it had measures in place to control runoff, but that it didn’t “monitor” them as “closely” as it “should” have.

No matter where you live, if happens to you:

- Contact the developer directly and do so in writing.

- Or, if you prefer, start with the City or County you live in. In Charlotte, that would be Storm Water Services.

- You may want to ask to be reimbursed for any cleaning bills or damage. So save your receipts.

- If all else fails, you can always sue. But, hopefully, it doesn’t come to that.

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