Reaching the Boiling Point with Savannah Flooding

Flooding was all the talk in Thursday morning’s Savannah city council pre-session. The discussion got as hot as the weather has been lately and it's all because certain areas of town. They are Habersham Village and the Baldwin Park area north of Victory all the way to Wheaton Street. Both areas are constantly flooding when we have heavy amounts of rain.

Jeremy Culler mows the lawn that's gotten so long from all of the recent rain.

“When it rains pretty hard, the edge of the road fills up really quickly,” explains Culler, who’s only lived here for a few months.

Culler is new to Baldwin Park, but Tandy McKenzie, who lives a few blocks over, is used to the way the water flows.

“The whole street's flooded. There is no curvature any place. It just rolls straight down. There's no drainage anywhere, nothing ever. It never drains,” explains Tandy McKenzie, who’s girlfriend has lived in their home since she was a child.

The water we see on the street Thursday afternoon is still left over from Wednesday night's storms.

”If you're parked down on the corner, or anywhere around in there, your car’s flooded. I mean it'll get two foot deep down there. I've taken my dog down there swimming in the street,” explains McKenzie.

It has district two alderwoman, Mary Osborne reaching her boiling point. The water was up to Osborne’s steps Wednesday evening before she went to the town hall meeting. She said cars couldn’t get down the street. Osborne also added that she is not taking issue with the flooding because she lives in the area, but because it always floods in certain parts of town.

”So there's $28 million in SPLOST money set aside to deal with the flooding issues, but any of the projects will be at least $40 plus million, what do you think needs to be done?” I ask Osborne.

“What I think needs to be done is that we have to have the city manager to set priorities and spend the money where it's needed the most,” she responds with frustration.

City manager, Michael Brown says $200 million has been spent to improve drainage in the last 15 years.

”I'm pleased to say that we've had no structural flooding in the last couple of weeks and that was our goal and we met it. Now we're going to have to go back into the pocket areas within neighborhoods and see what we can do to eliminate street flooding, but our job is not going to be easy because these are already developed neighborhoods" explains Brown.

“They've got to do something quick,” adds McKenzie.

Brown says they have to figure out ways to get water out of them faster. He says they're focused on two areas. The first is north of Victory drive going toward Wheaton Street along the Waters Avenue corridor and the second Habersham Village and along Abercorn Street.

The mayor did ask the city council in their pre-meeting if they would approve $60 million in bonds to try to fix the issues. They're still debating it.