What Bowling Green Stormwater learned about the 2025 floods, risks they prepared for this year

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Last year saw some extreme flooding all across the state, especially in parts of south-central Kentucky.

Areas of Warren County, Butler County and others saw significant flooding that destroyed roadways and homes while blocking roadways for weeks.

Bowling Green Stormwater has been hard at work identifying some of the worst areas in the city for flooding and find the best ways to protect those residents. Since Bowling Green has expanded tremendously, it has been increasingly difficult to provide good areas for water to run off and prevent the underground cave system from flooding creating some higher risk areas for flooding in some communities.

“One of the things that you have to be conscious of and aware of in Bowling Green and Warren County is that if you’re located next to a storm water retention basin or a sinkhole, those cave systems will eventually get fully charged with rainwater runoff they can’t hold anymore. And then that that flooding will tend to come up,” said Matt Powell, environmental compliance and storm water utility manager for the City of Bowling Green.

The Bowling Green City Commission has recognized his problem and has learned from the 2025 flooding incidents. Since then, they have made moves to better protect residents and their property.

“The Board of Commissioners supported us really well in an effort to to go after some of the the homes that we’ve seen, repetitive instances of this kind of thing happening. So we’ve purchased seven homes. Four of those have already been demolished. The remaining three are in the process, and all of those areas are being converted into storage, where we can store more of the storm water runoff or more of the karst surcharge,” Powell said.

However, 2025 was a time for the public to learn, as well as city officials as they were faced with difficult decisions when warning families of flooding potentially taking their homes. Powell says that coming up with a plan is the most important thing you can do to help yourself in serious flooding situations.

“We were talking to folks that were in communities at 10:00 or 11:00 at night, knocking on doors, and those folks are coming to the door and we’re letting them know this water is not going to stop rising. You know, by this time in the morning, you’re going to be flooded out. And without fail, every single person that we talked to didn’t have a plan. They didn’t have a good idea where they were going to go. So that is important just from that point forward. That’s a moment to learn from if you live here in Bowling Green or Warren County,” Powell said.

Powell also wants to remind residents to never drive in water across a roadway, as it does not take much to sweep a car away.