By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City officials detailed a major stormwater drainage initiative for a flood-prone area of south Del Rio during a meeting Monday, but some residents of the area wondered aloud if the city’s efforts will prove too little too late.
City elected officials and administrators hosted the meeting on the San Felipe Drainage Project in the Texas Community Bank community room.
Elected city officials attending the meeting included Mayor Al Arreola, Councilwoman Carmen Gutierrez, Councilman LeRoy Briones, Councilman Randy Quinones and Councilwoman Elsa Reyes. Val Verde County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. also attended.
Interim City Manager Manuel Chavez opened the meeting, welcoming the 25 people present.
“This is a very important topic we wanted to bring to the community for information. This project has been in the works for quite some time. … This is an important one because it has affected a lot of members of the community, and it’s so important that the city bring this project up to the front,” Chavez said.
Chavez thanked Quinones and Gutierrez for passing on citizens’ concerns about repeated past flooding in the project area, a neighborhood that lies between U.S. Highways 90 and 277 on the city’s south side. Chavez said he felt a town hall meeting, bringing together residents, elected leaders, city administrators and the engineering firm creating the design of the project, was the best way to disseminate the latest information on the project.
Chavez then turned the presentation over to Public Works Director Greg Velazquez and Martin Gonzales, an engineer with AG3, the company designing the drainage project for the city.
Velazquez went over the project’s history, saying it became a priority after a major rain event about four years ago. He said in November 2022, the city awarded a contract to AG3 for professional engineering and survey services for the project.
Velazquez noted one of the delays in the project was the purchase of a piece of property the city needed just north of
Bank’s community room downtown and addressed details of a major stormwater runoff
mitigation project the city is pursuing in the portion of the San Felipe neighborhood between U.S. Highways 90 and 277 on Del Rio’s south side. (Photo by Karen Gleason)
Dr. Fermin Calderon Boulevard/U.S. Highway 277, where the city plans to excavate a large detention pond to temporarily hold stormwater draining out of the neighborhood to the north.
Velazquez then introduced Gonzales, who gave a presentation on the project. Velazquez asked citizens to write down any questions they had to be answered following the update.
Gonzales said AG3’s design plans for the drainage project are 60 percent complete.
Gonzales began by reviewing the way stormwater travels through the neighborhood, noting there are residences on Bean Street south of U.S. Highway 90 that experience flooding during moderate to heavy rains.
“The sheer amount of flow that comes through the (south) side of the highway gets into the neighborhood, and it’s too much to handle,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales said AG3 is proposing a redesign of some of the streets in the neighborhood so those sections of the street can serve as drainage channels to move water away from the homes and out of the neighborhood.
Gonzales said the streets will be reconstructed with an “inverted crown” format, allowing the street to serve as a channel to carry water away from homes.
“Each of these streets is going to be reconstructed to better carry all the water down to the detention pond,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales said AG3 is proposing to carry water southwest on Bean Street, southeast on Hernandez Street, southwest on Chapoy Street, east on Rodriguez Street and southwest on Vitela Street. From there, the water will flow into a detention pond.
Once the stormwater is gathered into the detention pond, Gonzales said, it can be released in a controlled fashion that won’t cause more flooding farther downstream.
Gonzales said the San Felipe Drainage Project is the first phase of the flood mitigation efforts. He said the second phase will be to create another large detention pond farther upstream, north of U.S. Highway 90, to slow stormwater draining from the city’s northeast side.
Following the presentation, Velazquez and Gonzales began addressing questions from audience members.
Gutierrez requested the information presented during the meeting be posted on the city’s website for residents who might have missed the meeting. The councilwoman also asked that city administrators post a timeline of milestones in the flood plan so citizens could see when the different aspects of the project will be completed.
One citizen asked how much the city was paying AG3, and Velazquez replied AG3’s contract with the city was for $148,000. He noted construction of the first phase of the project — reconstructing the streets to channelize the stormwater and constructing the detention pond — is estimated to cost the city $2.1 million.
Jose Limon, whose home on East Chapoy Street floods regularly during even moderate rains, asked if the redesign of the streets “is going to help, before (the water) does damage to the houses.”
Gonzales replied, “The idea is to capture all the water in the streets, but like I said, this is just the first phase. This is going to help out a little bit with the smaller storms. With the larger storms, that’s where we’re talking about needing a berm further (north of Highway 90) and slow the water down from upstream before it gets to the neighborhood altogether.”
Gutierrez said the question she is always asked is why the city can’t start working on mitigating the flow of stormwater north of U.S. Highway 90 to stop the water before it reaches the neighborhoods south of the highway.
Velazquez replied there is a private property identified in the city’s master watershed study that the city will need to purchase for the detention pond north of the highway. He said the cost of the acquisition has been estimated at $38 million.
Gutierrez asked when citizens might anticipate Phase 2 to start, and Velazquez said the city’s flood maps have to be approved and certified by the state and FEMA so the city can apply for grants and low-interest loans.
“I don’t have an answer,” he said in reply to Gutierrez’s question.
Several citizens whose homes regularly flood or are threatened by floodwater south of U.S. Highway 90 also asked questions about the plan.
Resident Raul Ramon, who said he lives on Gutierrez Street near the site of the proposed Phase 1 detention pond, asked how big the pond would be and if the city believed it would be large enough to make a difference.
Gonzales said his company is still figuring out how much space will be needed for the detention pond based on calculations of water flow. He said after the water is collected into the pond, it will be released slowly to prevent flooding farther downstream.
Ramon said another problem is the culverts draining stormwater under U.S. 277 routinely become clogged with debris carried by the water, causing the water to back up.
After the meeting ended, several residents stayed behind to speak one-on-one with city officials and AG3 representatives.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
