In a city with so much area located adjacent to the Great Dismal Swamp, there’s going to be plenty of land that experiences drainage problems. Solving those problems and ensuring development does not take place where they are insoluble is one of the jobs of the Suffolk Planning Department.

But even the city’s planners have a hard time overcoming mistakes made nearly a century ago and compounded by poor decisions in the 1980s and 1990s.

That’s the situation some folks who live in Pughsville find themselves facing today. Portions of that community were built during the 1930s without a working plan for drainage. Construction of I-664 exacerbated the area’s poor drainage, yet houses continued to be built there along streets that had not been paved, streets for which maintenance responsibilities were murky.

Among the results: A 13-year-old park in the community now encompasses an area of wetlands. Ditches drain slowly, or not at all. Homes feature yards that remain soggy or have standing water that becomes stagnant, attracting mosquitoes that can become disease vectors.

It’s a hard situation for the folks who live there, and solutions do not come cheap. A 2012 planning document estimates that it would cost $21.4 million to fully implement a series of upgrades to solve the problem. City Council has understandably balked at spending that much money on a comprehensive fix and has, instead sought a phased solution that would begin in 2016 with a quarter-million dollars worth of stormwater improvements, half of which would come from a revenue-sharing program from the Virginia Department of Transportation.

The first phase would give some relief to residents in the northern part of the community. Folks in other parts of Pughsville presumably would have to wait for more money to become available to pursue the next phases.

With water standing in yards and the mosquito season just around the corner, patience might be a tough sell in Pughsville. Unfortunately that’s probably the best answer they’ll get for a while.