CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Corpus Christi City Council got a briefing at their meeting Tuesday on the possibility of building a canal on North Beach that would improve drainage in an area that's very prone to flooding.
Before that presentation, several residents from other parts of the city urged the council to also help control flooding in their neighborhoods.
“It creates a lot of problems," Flour Bluff resident Ken Haney said. "So, I appreciate your efforts and your diligence to help solve the problem."
The council did approve the Flour Bluff Area Development Plan Tuesday, but it's unclear if or when the plan will address flooding there.
North Beach is within Councilman Billy Lerma's district, and he says the canal would do more than control flooding.
He expects it to become a tourist attraction similar in some regards to San Antonio's famous Riverwalk.
“Once we get this project going, and you start seeing these investors coming in and spending money, spending 50 million dollars to build condos, or hotels, or whatever they want to build, that’s more money into our general fund to where we can come out and do all these other projects," Lerma said.
Projects like flood-control in Flour Bluff, something Haney says can't happen fast enough.
His wife is an on-call anesthesiologist who had to spend three days elsewhere during a big rain event, unable to get to and from work because of high water around their house.
And that's not all.
“In the past we’ve had to ask our neighbors who live a good distance away if we can drive through their property just to get out, because we couldn’t get to the street," Haney said. "We really need to get the drainage situation resolved in 'The Bluff'."
