City engineers visit Mountain Shadows to see flooded basements

City crews spent the last few days assessing more than a dozen homes in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in the west side of Colorado Springs.

They’re trying to determine the cause of flooded basements, wet sidewalks and overworked sump pumps.

They found there isn’t an underground creek in the area, which is what many of the neighbors thought.

Instead they said the heavy May rains are the culprit.

“We just have an enormous amount of groundwater, and it wants to go to the lowest point and it happens to be those homes,” said Tim Mitros with the city’s engineering department.

Mitros says that the best way to stop the flooding is a stretch of dry weather.

But he said that cleaning out Douglas Creek and the retention ponds above the neighborhood will also help.

The city is doing both this week.