ST. LOUIS — "You normally hear a roar and after the roar you see the sewer lids explode off," explained Walter Knoll of Walter Knoll Florist, "and the water is moving 40 to 50 miles an hour, if anything went down there it would just be gone, it is terrifying."
Knoll used to help put the manhole covers back on after storm surges, but he said it's just too risky. He now calls the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) for help.
The mess left behind in the wake of what's become yearly or bi-yearly flooding is costing the shops along Lasalle Street thousands. Knoll estimates $15,000 in damage from Tuesday's storm and said others have cost $300,000.
Neighbor Greg Stroud, President of Bimmers 'R' Us, said he's in the same boat.
“It always costs usually somewhere between 15 and 20 thousand dollars depending on how much you are paying your employees and how many employees are actually stopping work to actually clean up so they can work,” Stroud said.
Just down the road from Knoll and Stroud is Bob Baisch's business, Baisch & Skinner Wholesale Floral Distributor. "It's a total mess," Baisch said. "We're cleaning up basements right now again. When it rains, we all panic."
Across from Baisch & Skinner is Floral Supply Syndicate. "We had to throw a lot of our boxes out," employee Montrell McKee said, "and our inventory is getting wet, we have to do a lot of cleaning up after times like that."
Times like that, because this is a yearly, sometimes bi-yearly, occurrence on Lasalle Street.
"MSD has been constantly talking about what they are going to do and nothing ever happens," Baisch said.
McKee added, "I don't think they are going to do anything no time soon, but hopefully they do."
After numerous calls to MSD went unanswered on Tuesday and Wednesday, Stroud finally got ahold of them. “All we hear is, 'Hey we're going to send somebody out.' Well, this time I said, ‘Hey I would like a report of some sort, what did you find. Is there a problem, do we need to do anything.’"
5 On Your Side asked MSD if they have plans to help the businesses along Lasalle.
"There's not an easy answer to this," explained Sean Stone with MSD Project Clear. "There's a lot of commercial business in this area, a lot of parking lots, a lot of roads, a lot of rooftops, areas that don't absorb storm water when it falls. There's nothing from a sewer perspective that we can really do to drain more water out of this area."
The business owners all told 5 On Your Side flooding was not an issue on that street until development increased on Choteau and Grand.