AUBURN - The Cayuga County Public Works committee discussed solutions for a flooding problem in Owasco Tuesday night. Eddie Colella, who lives on North Road near Route 38A, has been dealing with the flooding for a few years but it has gotten progressively worse, he said.

Colella used to have a ditch on his property, but 18 years ago he bought 300 feet of pipe and paid for the county to install it around his property. At the time, 35 feet of the ditch was left uncovered because that was not on Colella's property, he said.

Because of drainage problems, the county took on a project to redirect some water from the hamlet above Colella's house to the ditch on his property almost a decade ago, he said. The new waterflow that empties into the ditch since then is 1,000 times more than what it was before the project was done, he said.

This past May, after a lot of rain, the water came down the ditch and all the way to Colella's house, which is 40 feet away from the ditch, he said. When his wife opened the door to go to work, the water was up to their porch, approximately 3.5 feet high. With the flooding getting more severe, Colella has been working with