For Kate Guimbellot, the dream home she and her wife built in the College Meadows neighborhood in northern Olathe has become more of a nightmare.
Their family moved into the brand new home in late 2016, expecting it to be the ticket to their retirement.
However, the first major rain, which arrived about a year and a half after they moved in, caused significant flooding at their home. It happened overnight, and when they woke up, the water in their basement was ankle-deep and there was water damage evident about 2 feet up from the floor.
“We were told that it had come in over our window well and had swamped our sump pump,” she said, adding that they were told it was a 100-year flood event and surely wouldn’t happen again.
In the end, they repaired the damage and had the window well to their basement raised 3 feet.
But over the next few years, they continued to face more flooding issues and discovered that an incorrectly designed and built stormwater system was to blame for the problems they and some of their neighbors had faced.
At the same time, Guimbellot says the city of Olathe has repeatedly denied having any responsibility in resolving the shortcomings of the stormwater infrastructure in the College Meadows neighborhood.
City officials declined the Post’s request for interviews and additional information related to the stormwater problems in College Meadows. Instead, Cody Kennedy, chief communications officer, emailed a prepared statement that called it an “unfortunate situation.”
More flooding raises more questions
In 2021, Guimbellot’s basement flooded for the second time. This time though, Guimbellot was awake for the rain, and she saw how the water flooded her backyard until it was well over her fence line.
“We, at the time, had a trampoline, and the trampoline was almost underwater,” she said.
She also saw the water rising in her basement, but it wasn’t pouring in over the foundation — it was coming up from the ground.
Guimbellot said she contacted the city, hoping to have someone there look into the stormwater flooding issue, but staff told her the water wasn’t the issue, it was the foundation of her home, which was built to city code but fell short of the home’s original design specifications.
Eventually, the city tapped engineering firm HNTB to do a study of the College Meadows stormwater issue in 2022, and they identified a series of problems. They did indicate that the foundation issue played a role in the flooding.
However, the study also found that engineers designed the stormwater system for the portion of the College Meadows neighborhood in which Guimbellot resides with faulty calculations — but the city signed off on it in the standard development process — and then the developer’s construction team built it incorrectly on top of that.
City documents for a 2016 zoning amendment and revised preliminary plat for the College Meadows neighborhood names Gary Spehar as the private engineer for the neighborhood. He could not be reached for comment.
While HNTB’s 2022 study identified multiple errors in the design and the build of the system, the primary solution the firm proposed was to upgrade the stormwater drainage system by adding a much larger reinforced concrete box in the stormwater system on Guimbellot’s street.
The study suggested that kind of addition would “adequately convey the flow necessary to decrease” the flooding, and put the estimated price tag of the work at roughly $466,000. It also ruled out other possible alternatives — like demolishing Guimbellot’s home or building a large flood wall on her property — calling them “not feasible.” The study did not assign responsibility for the work proposed.
Kennedy, the city spokesperson, said in an email: “The City reviews plans to ensure they meet general conformance to City standards and that plans are then stamped by a private engineer. The City then signs the plans with the expectation that construction meets the standards set forth in the plans. City staff does not re-run hydraulic models to review the private engineer’s assessment.”
After the 2022 report, Guimbellot and her wife, Julie, hired a company to fix the foundation problems in their home in 2023, addressing the mistakes on their property. The home builder, Taylored Homes, paid for half of that.
But yet, it flooded again in 2024. Again, Guimbellot watched water come up from the floorboards, starting along the side of the house where they could see the high water sitting in their backyard.
“The difficulty is that 5 feet of water stand against our home, and no home is built for that, unless it’s a houseboat,” she said.
After that, they tried to have an interior drain system installed for as much as $40,000, but they couldn’t find a company to do the work because they deemed it a nonsolution due to the sheer volume of the water.
New study suggests flood proofing the home in other ways
Guimbellot started researching stormwater management and city codes. She also contacted the city again after the third flooding incident, and HNTB conducted another study about the flooding problem in the College Meadows neighborhood earlier this year.
The new study suggests flood-proofing the home using a berm up against the house and a 5-foot concrete flood wall across the backyard. But it says that it would not offer total protection from flooding.
And to do it, a crew would need to rip out Guimbellot’s deck and brick patio.
It put the estimated cost of the project at $140,000, which Guimbellot said the city wanted to split with her. She feels that leaves her potentially paying $70,000 (on top of the roughly $15,000 she’s already paid for flood-related repairs) for what she sees as a subpar solution that will harm her property values and potentially fail to address the root of the flooding issue. With all that, she’s worried that her property will continue to flood and is concerned it could direct floodwater to her neighbors’ properties as well.
She also thinks the solution proposed in the 2025 study is pretty similar to the flood wall alternative supposedly ruled out in the 2022 study.
“I care about the longevity of my home”
Guimbellot, through all of this, heard about Max Cook and his wife, Rayane, who live a street over in the College Meadows neighborhood. They saw their home flood during that 2021 storm, as well.
Cook went to work one day and got a call from his wife telling him that their basement had flooded overnight. The carpet in the basement was soaked and the walls were wet too, about a foot and a half up from the ground.
Cook remembers feeling shocked, unaware that it had even rained because he was a heavy sleeper.
“I used to sleep through everything,” he said, but now he and his wife wake up frequently, afraid to find their home flooded again.
He’s seen the stormwater system near his house get overwhelmed and backed up, resulting in water rushing over the streets. Cook also remembered how there were signs of water damage in his brand new home when his family moved in about six years ago, which he thinks could be a sign it had flooded before.
And even though he hasn’t seen his home flood since 2021, he feels it’s only a matter of time. Plus, he wants to be a good neighbor and support Guimbellot as she seeks a solution.
“I want to be there for her, just like I would want somebody to be there for me if I was in her position,” he said. “It’s important to be that neighborly person.”
They aren’t alone. Since talking about this issue more publicly, they’ve learned that a handful of other homes in College Meadows have experienced some kind of flooding.
But, Guimbellot says, the city continues to insist it’s not its responsibility to solve the shortcomings of the stormwater system in their neighborhood.
Kennedy said the city feels the responsibility to repair the stormwater system falls on the neighborhood’s original developer, Ron Vanlerberg.
“As the builder did not create the structures as approved in the plans submitted to City staff, it would be the responsibility of the developer and builder to meet the standards of the submission,” he said in the emailed statement. “After construction, the City of Olathe inherits privately designed and constructed stormwater systems for maintenance. The developer maintains the obligation to address problems created with the stormwater system. The City retains the right to maintain but not the obligation to fix developer-created problems and determine how those costs are to be allocated.”
At the time of publication, Vanlerberg had not returned the Post’s request for comment.
Guimbellot and Cook filed tort claims against the city nearly a month ago, a type of civil claim that alleges one party harmed another, paving the way for some kind of compensation. (Kennedy said the city would not comment further on the issue because of the ongoing tort claim.)
The two neighbors don’t feel confident about what will come from that, especially because they’re not seeking compensation or to be repaid for the cost to repair their homes, but want to see the problem solved.
“I care about the longevity of my home,” Guimbellot said. “I don’t know what we do until this is solved.”
Plus, in the newly built part of their neighborhood, Cook and Guimbellot have found that a stormwater drainage system was built to be the correct size. It’s just about a block and a half away from the infrastructure next to Cook’s home.
“This system is what should have been put in,” he said.
Olathe is working on flood prevention in another neighborhood
In the 40-year-old Briarwood neighborhood off 135th Street and Brougham Drive, residents are reporting the opposite — no significant flooding and a pending $4.7 million stormwater infrastructure improvement project that they worry is going to cause more harm than good.
Partners Karissa Hallman and Andrew Brown moved into their home in the neighborhood together about five years ago, and Indian Creek runs near their home. Nearby is a storm sewer that the city plans to replace with a larger one.
Through all of this, they’ve learned that the work will require a temporary 20-foot easement into their backyard, which would fall in the middle of their swimming pool and could lead to the removal of their trees. Still, by last Wednesday, Brown and Hallman had yet to receive any letters in the mail on behalf of the city related to the temporary easement needed for the project.
Work is expected to begin this year and last into next year, though the exact timeline is unclear.
The Briarwood project, which the city plans to pay for with Stormwater Fund dollars, some bonds and money from the Johnson County Stormwater Management Advisory Council, is intended to “reduce the risk of flooding” for six homes within the project area, according to Olathe’s capital improvement plan list.
The project page in the capital improvement plan raises concerns about public safety in potential flash flood events and indicates that the project is one in a series of “identified neighborhood flood control projects” that fall outside of the established floodplain.
Hallman said the city has “been really vague” about the project, but as far as she knows, it’s addressing some street and yard flooding that’s occurred in serious rain events, not home flooding.
At the same time, Hallman and Brown aren’t convinced that the work would even address flooding — they and their neighbors have never seen the stormwater pipe in question back up or get overwhelmed even in the worst rain events.
“We’re confused as to why they would disrupt so many lives and so many people’s backyards for [this project],” Hallman said.
Brown worries what all of this work will do to their property values long-term, and if it could cause issues for the integrity of their home’s foundation if they’re digging a big hole nearby. Plus, he doesn’t know anyone who actually wants the project to proceed in the neighborhood.
“I just don’t think that the city officials are taking into account how this affects our lives and how it’s removing pieces of our lives,” Brown said. “We have small children, and our backyard is the entirety of our summer, and we’re going to lose that, and that’s our kids’ childhoods, and that’s a big deal to me.”
In her frustration, Hallman started doing research about stormwater projects in Olathe, and that’s when she stumbled upon the situation in the College Meadows neighborhood.
“She has the opposite problem that we’re having”
During a neighborhood meeting attended by city officials, Hallman recalls that Mayor John Bacon said it’s the city’s responsibility to address stormwater infrastructure because residents pay into the stormwater fund with monthly utility bills. That’s a message she passed along to Guimbellot in College Meadows.
“She has the opposite problem that we’re having,” Hallman said of Guimbellot.
The irony isn’t lost on Hallman; she lives in a neighborhood that’s getting a stormwater project she doesn’t want — and isn’t convinced is necessary. On the other hand, people in College Meadows wants stormwater improvements (estimated to cost somewhere around $466,000 a few years ago) that the city says isn’t its responsibility to deliver on.
It’s a point of frustration for Guimbellot, too.
Still, the city says that “staff has gone above typical support to assist with potential modifications,” but Kennedy says “ultimately the responsibility to resolve this situation lies upon the private engineers who designed the system, the developer of the subdivision, and the homebuilder.”
He also said that “staff is empathetic and understands the challenges of this situation with Ms. Guimbellot’s home.”
With her family about to go on a vacation to Mexico — and as the spring rain season ramps up — Guimbellot worried that her home will flood again while she’s out of the country. Her wife has already started preparing, going down to the basement to pick everything up off the floor just in case it does.
They’re especially worried because, even before it rained earlier last week, a stormwater detention basin just behind their home was already visibly full.
“It is not a question of if it’s going to happen again. It is going to happen again and again and again and again,” Guimbellot said, adding that she’s worried about what all that water means for the health of her foundation and the opportunities for mold.
A street over, it leaves Max Cook also feeling “trapped,” concerned that he and his neighbors really don’t have the resources to keep dealing with this issue.
“I really just wanted to get it to resolution,” Guimbellot said. “I didn’t want College Meadows to be known as the flooding neighborhood.”
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