"I was told this only filled with the hundred year rain."

  More like the hundred day rain; Karen Keever says her backyard was completely flooded three, four, five times a year- when she was lucky.

  "It was like a swamp. The neighbors all hated it. It was full of mosquitoes, and muck and mire, and garbage," Karen tells us as she sifts through pictures of her land after a heavy rain.

 Karen petitioned the Nixa Board of Aldermen for months, claiming the problem was theirs to fix.

  City officials say this portion of Karen's yard is a retention pond; Karen says it's not.

  "I said I've looked at my deed, my property, I had a survey done, and I said there's no retention pond easement in the back of my house and you're flooding me out.  I'm going to have to do something, I'm going to have to close it off," Karen explains, recounting a conversation she had with the Nixa mayor.

 She's talking about an underground pipe now filled with foam that runs from a culvert in her front yard to Karen's backyard.

  Karen says her house is like an outlet for a river.

  When it rains water flows down her street and into her backyard.

  Essentially what she did by closing off the pipe is build a dam- and flood the street, turning the neighbors who once echoed her concerns against her.

  "They're yelling at me 'open it up, open it up,'" she recalls her neighbors yelling.

  She showed us a picture of the sign they displayed the last time it rained; Karen's clogged pipe forces the water into the street.  

  The sign referred to her as "Your home rule commissioner."

  Karen was issued a nuisance ticket for what she says is a desperate attempt to protect her property.

  "Obstructing the flow of storm water drainage pipe," reads the citation.

  The city admits Lynn Street is flooded with problems.

  "There are several houses involved," says Alderwoman Barb Stillings.

  Nixa voters said no to a proposed storm water utility fee in 2006, so with the city strapped for cash officials ask that homeowners take some responsibility.

  "Ultimately the homeowners have to work on the things themselves," Stillings continues.

  Karen says it's not her responsibility to maintain a neighborhood swimming hole. 

  She may end up compensating the city.
 

  Her nuisance ticket, issued last August, comes with a $500 a day fine, provided Karen does not unblock the pipe, which she hasn't.

  She says she won't act unless a jury instructs her to do so; she goes to trial in january.