A significant challenge facing Batesville’s incoming slate of public officials will be storm water runoff.

After hearing business owner Amy Thomas describe flooding at Smith Cleaners during the June 12 deluge, one alderman suggested a citywide study of storm runoff.

Now that the weather is drier, hotter and deluges hopefully less frequent, the idea should not be allowed to fall through the cracks.

Batesville needs to develop, through its engineering department, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Corps of Engineers and any other appropriate resource, a coordinated, comprehensive citywide plan to minimize flooding from sudden, intense deluges  like that on June 12 — over five inches within two hours in some areas of town.

Granted, preventing flooding damage altogether is probably impossible. Sufficient rain in a short enough time period will always cause some flooding.

And granted, much of it is our fault. The area along Thomas and Van Voris Streets where Smith Cleaners stands was once — before the railroad was built in the late 1850s — a lake that provided duck hunting and fishing, according to accounts predating the railroad and the town that grew up around it.

Yet in recent years, Thomas told aldermen, flooding has become worse. More frequent storms. More water in shorter times. May have to do with global warming. Certainly has to do with global weirding.

Flooding from these — we call them rain events nowadays — is not limited to the Thomas/Van Voris area.

Marilyn Ware tells about Sand Creek flooding near her Robin Lane home with waters of sufficient force to lift a piece of concrete 9 feet by 12 feet downstream from its moorings.

The city has addressed Sand Creek flooding further downstream from Robin Lane, but the creek carrying runoff from Batesville’s largest watershed threatens property along its banks for much of its length through the Harmon farm property to its mouth north of Batesville where it empties into the Tallahatchie River.

Along another creek — the unnamed creek that parallels Bright Road and Panola Avenue before going under Panola to empty into the river just west of the river bridge at Panola Extended — property owners near its mouth are faced with more water and faster running water than ever before.

Historically, the city’s position is that the property lines of landowners next to creeks run to the centers of the creeks, hence prohibiting city work on private property.

The problem with that is the downstream landowner has little or no control over what occurs upstream, but the city allows development of property upstream that hastens and increases the volume of water. A vacant lot will slow runoff water through percolation. If the same vacant property is turned into a paved parking lot, the runoff is increased and speeded up.

It’s just that simple. And it’s not.

That would be the purpose of a citywide, comprehensive study of storm water runoff. It is a problem that is bigger than a single landowner can solve. That’s a basic function of government — to helps its citizens find solutions to problems too big for them to solve by themselves using their own resources.

Dealing with storm runoff doesn’t have much appeal for elected officials compared to beautification projects, business openings, industrial expansion announcements and the like. Any solution is going to be hard to find, expensive to implement and little noticed.

Attempting to solve the city’s flooding problems won’t win many votes, but it might lose a few.