[This is one in a series of articles on the trails, parks, and development along the Chattahoochee River from the southernmost tip of Cobb County in Mableton, northward to Atlanta Road in the Smyrna/Vinings area]

We had heavy overnight rain in Mableton from Sunday evening to Monday morning, and in the aftermath, I walked to Riverview Landing, about a mile and a half from my house, to see whether there was any flooding.

Technically when I cross the street at Oakdale Road, I leave the City of Mableton and enter Smyrna. The Riverview Landing property was annexed into Smyrna before site work began on the large mixed-use development, and the border between Mableton and Smyrna zig-zags around, looking a bit like the tentacles on a squid.

In 2009 when we had flooding across South Cobb and Douglas County, the river rose all the way to Riverview Road. The drainage system installed for the development seems to have worked though. While the river rose after the recent rain, it never came close to the road or any of the buildings in The Eddy at Riverview Landing.

When I walked down to the river from the Eddy at Riverview Landing Monday, I walk over yellow tape that had been strung across the path, but that someone had torn down. The conditions didn’t seem dangerous to me, so I just continued down to the pathway along the river.

The worst effect I noticed wasn’t even the river level, which was high but not catastrophic. It was the litter that was evidently washed off the banks from upriver and was floating along with the currents made faster by the increased volume of water. The river is usually beautiful there, but the trash floating downriver was not a pleasant feature.

Another interesting thing is that the floating boat ramp adjacent to the City of Smyrna park, which usually follows a steep descent to the river, had floated so far upward that the ramp was level with the top platform.

Here’s one of the video clips I took.