One year after Hurricane Dolly, parts of Valley still face threat of flooding

Boating would have been a better idea than driving on some Cameron County roadways after Hurricane Dolly made landfall in the Rio Grande Valley a year ago this week.

Water on the streets measured as much as 3 feet deep in some areas. Residents had to take long detours around flooded areas to get home in some instances.

Floodwaters ravaged Palm Valley, turning some of the small town’s neighborhoods into ponds. Despite some recent infrastructure improvements and some others that are in the works — including expanded drainage ditches and new 60-inch drainage pipes — the town’s topography continues to place it at risk for flooding, one official said.

“Realistically, the low areas are going to flood if there’s a 4-inch-per-hour rainfall,” Mayor Dean Hall said.

Three feet of floodwater forced Palm Valley resident Don Raumaker out of his house for a month.

Water flowed through a damaged noise abatement wall off Stuart Place Road into the area surrounding his home on Boros Court, he said.

“Water was coming through in absolute waves,” Raumaker said. “People were out there trying to tell the big cars and trucks to stop trying to drive through. It was people who don’t care about other people.”

The Texas Department of Transportation has been working on several remediation projects in addition to its annual hurricane season preparations, according to a representative for the agency. And several local municipalities have followed suit to secure residential roads.

Construction on a $7.5 million reconstruction of frontage roads in Cameron and Hidalgo counties is about 16 percent complete, TxDOT spokeswoman Amy Rodriguez wrote in an e-mail.

Floodwater from Hurricane Dolly cut the Valley’s main east-west artery, Expressway 83, for a couple of days last year near the Cameron-Hidalgo county line.

Expressway traffic between La Feria and Mercedes had to be rerouted because of the flooding, but also because of a rebuilding project that was already under way before the hurricane, Rodriguez said.

“In certain intersections, the entire overpass was shut down to be reconstructed in a one-phase operation,” she said. “Traffic could not cross under the expressway and expressway traffic could not travel over the overpass.”

Because frontage roads are lower than the expressways, they flood more easily, Rodriguez said. That was the crux of the problem.

“It would take quite a rainfall to shut down the main roads now,” Rodriguez said.

Funding for the interchange improvements comes from TxDOT’s construction budget, she said.

The state agency annually removes debris from roadside drainage ditches to improve the flow of excess water away from the highway, Rodriguez said. Those projects are paid for through the TxDOT maintenance budget.

Although the agency will try to improve drainage on most major roadways, the downtown and residential areas are in the hands of local governments, Rodriguez said.

Harlingen completed its five-year downtown drainage project last year to “drastically improve problem areas,” Public Works Director Dan Serna said. The project was funded by $21.8 million in bonds approved in the 2003 municipal election.

A few smaller drainage projects are pending funding, Serna said.

Other TxDOT drainage projects include:

>> A drainage ditch upgrade in the low spot along Expressway 83 between La Feria and Mercedes has been completed. TxDOT also has installed a larger drainage culvert on Solis Road in the Mid-Valley area. More projects are planned in that area.

>> TxDOT plans to install drainage culverts at a few other locations in Cameron County, but those projects are on hold until funding is received, Rodriguez said. Locations include Farm-to-Market Road 733, FM 2556 and FM 506 in Cameron County.

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Corey Ryan is a reporter for the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen.