Alexandria, VA 2012 - Stormwater Budget $28.5 Million In 10 Yrs; Now It's Half A Billion In 10 Yrs.

[hatrack]

The heavy storm that hit Alexandria in July 2019, filling the streets with rainwater and flooding dozens of basements, was considered a “50-year” weather event — the kind of deluge with a 1-in-50 chance of pummeling the riverfront Northern Virginia city every year. But then it happened again, a little more than 12 months later. And again. And again. Now, as Alexandria officials ask for patience while they work on updating decades-old storm water infrastructure, many residents say they are tired of waiting as they endure yet another season of torrential rain — including this week, when the remains of Hurricane Ida drenched the Washington region.

“It’s extremely stressful. You’re always living in fear of the next flood, and we don’t know if they’re going to be able to stop it at all,” said Rose Esber, who lives in a four-story condominium building near the King Street Metro station. Her building has seen so many repeated deluges in its basement parking garage, she said, that it was dropped by its insurance company. Concerns from residents such as Esber have grown louder and more widespread in some parts of Alexandria in the past two years, illustrating how a mix of intensifying climate change and neglected infrastructure has created a challenge that may take years to resolve — but for which a solution cannot come fast enough.

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Where the city in 2012 had devoted about $28.5 million for storm water improvements over a 10-year period, it is now projected to spend nearly half a billion dollars on a wider range of projects within the same time frame, he added.Yet Katie Waynick, vice chair of the city’s ad hoc flooding advisory group, said that compared to the scope of the problem, even more money may be needed. She has called on city council to use its second tranche of Rescue Plan money to pay for design and planning studies. As rainfall threatens to grow even worse, Waynick also said Alexandria must do more than simply getting the system in line with existing city standards. Many of Alexandria’s 185 miles of storm sewer pipes were constructed before those standards were introduced, so ongoing capacity efforts have focused on bringing those up to the mark. But with storms 30 times more intense, that may not be enough, Waynick said.

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Geography is not necessarily working in Alexandria’s favor. One-fifth of the city, which grew on the banks of the Potomac in the 1700s as a port for trading tobacco and enslaved people, is mapped as flood plain. Some of that includes the city’s Old Town, which uses a combined storm surge and sewer system that is the focus of a separate capacity effort launching this fall. But immediately to the west, the neighborhoods of Del Ray and Rosemont rely on the city’s independent storm water system — jump-outs, storm drains and pipes — that has borne the brunt of recent flooding.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/09/03/alexandria-flooding-stormwater-action-mitigation/

[Backseat Driver]

1. I remember reading that archeologists had found remnants of

at least four "old" ships in Alexandria, VA. shores. Were those discovered wrecks protected and saved from the savage flooding last week? Anybody know?