CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — Tropical Storm Alberto caused a lot of flooding across the Coastal Bend. But on the city's Westside some neighborhoods flood even without a tropical storm.
Our Westside neighborhood news reporter, Naidy Escobar spoke with some residents who said they've dealt with flooding issues for decades.
City leaders now have a plan they said will help keep flood waters out of their neighborhood, and have approved a nearly $20 million improvement plan to address the flooding issues in Los Encinos, Las Colonias and the Molina neighborhoods.
The project includes the construction of a 130-acre detention pond.In phase two new box culverts like the ones below will be installed under North Padre Island Drive.
City of Corpus Christi Director of Engineering Services Jeff Edmond said the plan for improvements has taken a while because it is a very complicated project. Funding was one issue.
"The flooding risk will go down, what the project will do is when we have these high flow type events water will flow into this pond. It is essentially digging a very big hole in the ground projects like this requires a significant amount of volume to attenuate those floods," Edmond said.
The Alexanders, who lived on the Westside since 2006, said they have waited long enough, it's time to get something done.
"We have not been a priority for some reason who knows, I don't know why and what do we do?, what is that plan?, we are gonna have to make a plan," Lonie Alexander said.
KRIS 6 News asked Edmond why this was taking so long being that the project will only be 18 months.
"I would say it’s obviously not an easy problem to solve so it’s not been due to lack of desire, but the thing prompted part was being able to get grant funding to help solved the problem," he said.
The work on this flood prevention project is scheduled to start in July. The project is expected to be done in February of 2026.
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