We hope a meeting of the minds can help resolve persistent flooding that has plagued Mayville residents and businesses for the past decade.

On May 21, heavy downpours dumped inches of rain throughout Chautauqua County. While much of the county saw standing water, Mayville was among the hardest areas hit. Mayville residents wouldn’t have been so upset if such flooding were an infrequent event. Unfortunately, it is a situation they see far too often.

“We can’t keep doing this every time we have a rain event,” Martin Bova, Mayville mayor, told The Post-Journal in the storm’s aftermath. “It puts economic strains on residents and businesses – it’s really a quality-of-life issue.”

Bova and other village residents place blame for the flooding on the nearly decade-old reconstruction of Route 394. Bova told The Post-Journal there were multiple drainage pipes that transferred water directly into the lake and that he thinks during the reconstruction project, the state Department of Transportation eliminated all but one of the drainage pipes, with the understanding that one pipe was sufficient. DOT officials disagree with that claim, citing previous investigations that showed, for example, beaver dams to be at fault for flooding in 2011.

Allowing this problem to persist and chase visitors and businesses away from the village is unacceptable. We applaud Bova for reaching out to state and county officials to see how to resolve the flooding problem – but reaching out and sitting in a room for a few hours won’t make a lick of difference if all of the involved parties don’t come to the table with cool, clear heads and a predisposition toward solutions rather than finger-pointing.

Fault and finger pointing no longer matter for Mayville residents; something all those involved in future meetings on this matter would do well to remember.