Heavy rain Thursday night (May 9) in Bentonville flooded Set In Stone Granite, LLC. on SW Regional Airport Blvd (Hwy. 12)
Sales Manager, Dennis Martin blames it on the Arkansas Highway Transportation Department.
He said the drainage ditch is clogged with debris, and they need to clean it out.
“It’s devastating, you`re trying to build a business and make it your life and this happens to you twice and the state don’t care so what does that tell you,”' said Martin.
AHTD Spokesman Danny Straessle, said after the first big rain in mid-April they planned to go out there to clean up the ditch.
“I think timing is probably what came into play here with the property owner notifying us, we got it into the work flow and before we were able to get there and clean out what they had notified us about before here comes a very, very heavy rainfall which produced a lot of water,” said Straessle.
“The point of it is You got a drainage ditch that is plugged up, clean it up, it`s all you have to do, I mean come on, so you much rather put someone out of business then listen to them and take care of it at that time,” added Martin.
The AHTD plans on doing draining improvements when they widen Highway 12 to five lanes.
“Right now there are four round concrete culverts that pass underneath the highway, we’re going to replace that with larger box sized reinforced concrete culverts to help convey more water in that area,” said Straessle.
Officials with the highway department are scheduled to go out the site next week to clean up the ditch.