Seguin drainage improvement projects now in the works thanks to grant funding

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

(Seguin) – A total of $37.8 million in infrastructure changes are coming to a local neighborhood near you.

Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush has announced that the Texas General Land Office (GLO) has approved a total of more than $47.8 million in flood mitigation projects to improve water, wastewater and drainage infrastructure in Guadalupe County.

City of Seguin officials say these infrastructure projects will directly benefit thousands of residents in majority low-to-moderate income (LMI) areas that have faced repetitive storm damage in 2015 and in 2017 with Hurricane Harvey.

They say the city of Seguin experiences flooding during local heavy rainfall events and due to impacts of hurricanes and tropical storms. The flooding and extreme runoff, they say, results in road closures, flooding of homes, damaged infrastructure and severe erosion that must be repaired to reduce risk of damage to public and private buildings.

As a recipient, the city of Seguin has announced four bundles of priority drainage projects that are designed to greatly improve the safety of its 25,520 residents.

Those projects include:

Walnut Branch Drainage Improvements
• Land acquisitions to expand the existing detention ponds near Interstate 10 and Huber Rd (north basin) and Fleming Drive (south basin)
• Build bridge crossings on San Antonio Avenue at Walnut Branch and William Street at Walnut Branch and replace low water crossing further downstream
• Construct a small drainage system on Aldama at Kingsbury for a neighborhood access road

North Heideke Street Drainage Improvements
• Create an underground storm water conveyance system on the northern end of downtown Seguin bound by North Austin and Heideke Streets. The storm drainage system will allow for
conveyance of stormwater runoff from the street channel to an underground conveyance system and increase the storm drainage network for a total of 6,700 LF.

Mays Creek Drainage Improvements
• Replace culverts at State Hwy 46, County Road 725, River Oaks Dr. and County Road 402 to the appropriate size for a total of 5,650 LF
• Construct an additional driveway to ensure residential safety by allowing two ingress/egress points during flooding

North Guadalupe Street Drainage Improvements
• Install a regional detention basin via land acquisition near Guadalupe Street and FM 78
• Install a new storm drain system that will include a storm trunk line along 8th Street to West New Braunfels Street, a storm drain branch to extend east and west along West New Braunfels, a branch with inlets will extend east from 8th Street along Collins Avenue to Guadalupe Street, and a smaller branch to extend west along Kingsbury Street, for a total 11,175 LF.

Seguin Mayor Donna Dodgen says she is thankful for the funding. She says it will now allow the city to tackle some much need projects.

“The City of Seguin continues to experience severe flooding events that inundate our drainage and wastewater systems,” said Seguin Mayor Donna Dodgen. “The $37.8 million grant awarded today by Commissioner Bush and the GLO will help us protect our residents from dangerous floodwaters. These funds are vital to increasing our resiliency.”

After the application process closed, the GLO evaluated all 290 submitted applications in accordance with the HUD approved scoring criteria. Eligible applications with the highest scores were awarded funds. The second round of the competition will award the remaining $1,144,776,720 in mitigation funding to Hurricane Harvey eligible entities.

The remaining $10 million allocated to Guadalupe County will go to similar projects in the city of Marion.

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