County working to alleviate flood waters in West Harlingen

Ducks paddled along floodwaters that lapped near Jimmy Ray's trailer as he pointed to the lake that seeped into his neighborhood in La Feria.

"The other day a fellow asked me the name of it, but I didn't know," said Ray, who lives in the Winter Garden mobile home park on Business 83 near Bass Boulevard.

Weeks of rain swelled Hurricane Dolly's floodwaters to fill the basin that some residents call Bass Lake. Monday's heavy downpours didn't help.

"It's a mess," said Ray, a retired paper mill worker from Alabama. "The county's got to do something."

For weeks, county pumps have roared near Ray's trailer.

"It has water draining in from other areas," County Commissioner Edna Tamayo, who oversees the area, said of the lake.

Across western Cameron County, hundreds of acres are submerged by floodwater.

"Areas that hadn't flooded before are flooding now," Tamayo said.

Floodwaters rippled along Tamm Lane from Business 83 to Ewing Road.

Near the intersection of Tamm and Ewing, county crews planned to lay pipes into newly dug drainage ditches to help drain floodwaters, Tamayo said.

Hurricane Dolly, on July 23, and weeks of rain that followed opened officials' eyes to the county's glaring drainage problems, said Justin Fisher, who feared more rain could push floodwaters into his brick home off Tamm Lane.

"I guess they've been putting if off for years until we got these rains," said Fisher, a store clerk.

Floodwaters have created a moat around Rosie Conde's brick home on Ewing Road.

"It's gotten worse actually just these last couple of days," she said as she stood on a dry spot in her driveway. "Yesterday it looked like a stream. It's way past where it was with Hurricane Dolly," Conde said of the flood level.

"What I don't understand is that this is supposed to be a zone where there's not supposed to be flooding. It's because of the drainage."

County crews will keep pumping water from the area, Tamayo said.

Monday, county officials borrowed a pump from Port Isabel, she said. Friday, the Texas Department of Transportation will lend her another pump, bringing to 11 the total number of pumps now working.

"We're very aware of all the sites," Tamayo said of the flooded areas. "We're pumping like crazy."