Editor’s note: The Lookout is now on social media! Don’t forget to follow on Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram. Rest assured, the newsletter/website will always be the “flagship” publication; we’re not making a pivot to #influencers any time soon.—Dave.

Windsor Bisbee and Sarah Sahlaney would have preferred that Santa just stuck to coal for Christmas 2023. Instead, the Church Hill residents returned home from holiday travel out of state that year to find their East Broad Street home in partial ruin.

“We hadn't been in town,” recalled Sahlaney in a recent phone interview. “We were driving back on I-95 and we were like, It’s not even really raining that hard. I think we both thought, Oh, it's not going to be that bad.”

No such luck. Following a hard rain, stormwater had flooded the alley just north of Chimborazo Playground, onto which the couple’s house backs up, destroying their ground-floor apartment and totaling two of their vehicles parked in their carport. The cost of the damage reached north of $70,000; insurance, they told The Lookout, only covered roughly a third of that sum.

[Disclosure: As nearby neighbors I often socialize with the couple. They did not request this coverage and have no influence over it.]

Less than three years later, Bisbee and Sahlaney are wondering how much worse it’s going to get. Since May 2026, when the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities (DPR) began unannounced construction on new pétanque courts in the small park behind their house, they’ve observed an uptick in the frequency and severity of flooding in the alley, which behind their house sits more than 10 feet below its eastern terminus at N. 31st St.

“Whether it's like an increased frequency of storms, or the construction has caused a lot more runoff […] every time it rains, it's a situation back there,” Bisbee said. During a storm in mid-June, I encountered him in the alley while filming the flooding, trying to keep the single storm drain at its lowest point clear of debris. “At a certain point, it’s not about keeping the [grate of the] drain clear on top, it’s just about the fact that the volume of water is too much.”

It’s possible that the construction, which The Lookout was first to report DPR had started without obtaining the stormwater permit required by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), has exacerbated this dynamic. “It’s however many thousands of square feet of new, impervious surface, and in reality, that does generate runoff that's going to enter into that adjacent stormwater drain,” said Evan Branosky, a Church Hill resident who served as DEQ’s chief stormwater policy advisor until 2025. The incomplete project—which is currently under review after the DPR, facing neighborhood uproar and without permission to continue the job, retroactively sought public comment on it—converted a swath of the park’s grass into hard-packed, crushed-stone pads that do not appear to drain quickly. During multiple rainstorms in June, water could be seen cascading over the retaining wall from the park into the alley.

Bisbee and Sahlaney had never seen that before. “The alley was bad before; it is extra bad now,” Sahlaney said.

Richmond’s Department of Public Utilities (DPU) is responsible for administering DEQ’s stormwater permitting for projects within the city, and is currently reviewing DPR’s belated application for one regarding the suspended construction. It is also responsible for maintaining the alley’s inlet. In an emailed response to The Lookout’s inquiry, spokesperson Rhonda Johnson on Friday said (emphasis added):

In other words, DPU believes the flooding is just a matter of too much debris jamming up the drain during storms.

Make no mistake: there’s a lot of debris. On the morning of July 10th, just hours before DPU’s extended deadline to issue a statement to The Lookout about the flooding, a crew from the department arrived at the alley and began clearing the dirt and detritus that has accumulated for years along the wall, curbs, and adjacent concrete channel. Bisbee Sahlaney could not recall another time in the last half decade when DPU conducted this type of maintenance in the alley.

Whether this remediation solves the flooding remains to be seen. Ditto, whether DPU keeps up with the upkeep. “Sure, do the easy thing first, see if it helps,” Bisbee said. “But I don't have confidence that they'll come back out again, like in a timely fashion” next time it floods. Still, it’s some relief, especially given DPR’s purgatoried pétanque project seems to have exacerbated the runoff.

After pausing the construction, the department eventually erected silt fencing around the site to bring it into compliance with DEQ’s official Stormwater Management Handbook. But the black-mesh fence failed at the northeastern corner of the site during a storm in mid-June, and it was not repaired until June 26th, as The Lookout reported at the time. On June 29th, DPU issued a formal warning letter to DPR about the delayed repairs, noting that “Failure to correct these conditions may result in additional enforcement action if future inspections reveal continued noncompliance.”

As the permitting process winds on, the couple is concerned that the city is not taking seriously the potential for another major flood in the alley, and the costly damage that would bring. “I have sent DPU and [7th District City Councilmember] Cynthia Newbille emails to this point [saying] this was a problem space before, it was not a trivial problem space, it has caused a lot of damage, and the pétanque courts are making it much, much worse,” said Sahlaney. “I feel really vulnerable, because we’re a young family, and we don’t have thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in savings.”

On July 7th, Newbille forwarded one of Sahlaney’s emails to Scott Morris, the director of DPU. “Please review and advise at your earliest convenience re: strategies to address the flooding issue,” the longtime East End politician wrote. DPU’s Morris responded to Sahlaney on July 10th with the same statement the department had issued The Lookout. Newbille did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

The interminable debate over Richmond’s first zoning code refresh in half a century is finally over. Haha just kidding, it continues to be an absolute quagmire with no end in sight. In late June, local attorney and “political figure”—as The Richmonder’s Michael Phillips put it—Paul Goldman filed in Richmond Circuit Court in an attempt to block the move. The gambit faces long odds that start with collecting 16,000 signatures from opponents to the code refresh for a formal petition. But a formal petition isn’t the only way Richmonders are making their voices heard about the housing reform.

In Shockoe Bottom, one vandal recently resorted to a more rudimentary method of public discourse, scrawling “FUCK THIS NIMBY SHIT” on the anti-code refresh sign erected earlier this year on the vacant lot at E. Broad St. near N. 19th St. (“NIMBY” is an acronym for “Not In My Backyard.”) The property owner, Ginter Park resident Bill Laffoon, did not respond to a request for comment on the graffiti that now adorns his sign.

In more positive news related to the hotly contested 3.5-acre plot, the Church Hill Association and Friends of Chimborazo Playground recently announced a partnership with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to plant a whole bunch of trees in the park. Hell yeah, trees! Per the groups’ literature, the goals are:

By my count, the schematic proposes 28 new trees total across 16 different cultivars. (Some of them are more bushes than trees, I guess. Sorry to any exacting arborists reading this.) The actually planting day won’t take place until October 31st—sPoOkY!—but in a commendable gesture at public inclusion, the orgs are already soliciting neighborhood input on the project. Fill out the survey here.

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.