Study to identify needs for regional drainage system

EDINBURG - The Rio Grande Valley is developing a regional plan to revamp its drainage systems for the first time in four decades.

The Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council is using a $3.5 million federal grant to build a consolidated plan for improving drainage in the four-county area.

The study funded by the Economic Development Administration will identify drainage projects with a significant regional impact for potential federal funding.

The area's irrigation and drainage districts have small projects that affect local areas, said Godfrey Garza, general manager for the Hidalgo County Drainage District. But not enough has been done to identify channels, floodways and detention ponds that impact the region.

The study may also include a proposal to consolidate all of the districts into a single entity, similar to how river basin commissions operate, Garza said. Drainage is an inherent regional issue because waters that inundate Hidalgo and Starr counties always end up in Willacy and Cameron counties.

"The water goes to the lowest places," Garza said.

The study is funded through the administration's grant to solve drainage problems Hurricane Dolly exposed when it swamped most of the Valley last summer, said Ken Jones, executive director of the development council. Once the study is completed, it will be housed centrally at the council with maps of proposed projects and recommended land use.

The Valley last examined regional drainage after 1967's Hurricane Beulah, which resulted in the major drainage canal crossing its counties.

Drainage work since then improved small, local issues while major regional projects such as Hidalgo County's proposed Raymondville Drain have faltered with a lack of funding.

By planning to improve drainage in a multi-county area, the region can present requests for funding to state and federal authorities that will have a bigger impact, Jones said. A prioritized list of projects the entire region supports stand a better chance of receiving funding than work that affects a single neighborhood.

The first step for the engineering firm hired to prepare the plan will be to gather all the studies already done by the districts, said Sonia Lambert, chairwoman of the regional drainage committee that applied for the funding and the general manager for Cameron County Drainage District No. 3.

Studying the drainage work that's been done locally will give them a better idea of what the next step is for a regional plan, she said.

"One county affects the adjacent county," she said. "You can't select and isolate one county without affecting the other."