I think we have the mother of all puddles

WASILLA - Charles Carney likes to fish, and usually he has his hip boots with him on such outings. But he never thought the hip boots would be needed to simply walk in his front door.

While many people have been battling large puddles as a result of break-up, Carney and his apartment-complex neighbors have been waging an all-out war on water.

I think we have the mother of all puddles, Carney said Tuesday, as state workers were pumping thousands of gallons away from his residence. They have already pumped 400,000-500,000 gallons, and it only took two inches off the puddle.

Carney lives on Church Road, across from Mission Hills subdivision, the site of a series of improvements last year.

But now residents on that road, and many others in the Valley, are finding out that having no drainage system results in large puddles, and sometimes that means unbearable situations.

Its tough. The water is 12 inches deep in the shallowest spots, and up over my hip boots in the deepest areas, Carney said. We had to set up sand bags so the house would not flood.

Flooding is a major problem this spring, as a large snowfall melted when temperatures rose. Naturally, the water flows to the lowest elevation, and the result is a huge puddle.

Now Carney and his neighbors are getting accustomed to the sound of pumps running.

They pumped it for 18 hours non-stop yesterday, and you could barely tell a difference, Carney said.

Besides the large amount of water and general size of the area, the thing that really separates this puddle from all the rest is its awareness of technology.

See, this puddle is gaining notoriety on the Internet.

The other tenant in the affected duplex, Joanna Eppler, has been taking pictures of the puddle as it has gotten bigger, and now smaller, and posting it to an Internet page.

Ive got family and friends who think it is pretty funny how big it is, so I decided to put it on the Internet for them to see it, Eppler said. That way they can see why we cant park in the driveway and have to walk through the woods to get inside.

The address for Epplers site is home.gci.net/~gwenhaven.

Eppler said thanks to the nearly round-the-clock pumping, the puddle is starting to diminish a little.

We knew this was coming, and it only took two days for it to get like this, Eppler said. But they are doing a good job pumping it. It looks like they are starting to put a dent in it.Photo: Hip boots are required at this Church Road puddle. State workers estimated the puddle contained more than a million gallons of water.

Photo by CASEY RESSLER.