$12 million storm water project expected to lessen chances of freeway flooding

Work is underway on a massive $12 million storm water project that is expected to help mitigate freeway flooding.

Two massive ponding areas, one of which is being expanded to twice its original size, are being built across Interstate 10 from one another near the Copia exit. They will be connected by a tunnel being dug underneath. But in order to clear the way for it, dozens of homeowners were bought out.

“They sent us a letter stating they needed to buy us out,” said Consuelo Gonzalez, who has lived in a home near the intersecion of Cebada and Durazno in Central El Paso for 70 years, a home her late parents helped build themselves. She told ABC-7 it’s hard to leave.

“Especially because my father and my mother built the first rooms with their own hands,” she said. “That’s what hurts me most.”

“We’re very sensitive to people’s private property,” said Alan Shubert, vice president of operations for EPWU. “It’s not something you necessarily want to do, go out and purchase it.”

Shubert said clearing the way for the Gateway Stormwater Ponds Project should help protect I-10 from flooding, like it did during Storm 2006 and just about every year since.

“By doing this, it gives us a big volume that we can collect to take the peak out of the storm and then either percolate it or pump it at some later time after the storm is over,” Shubert said.

The two massive ponding areas will be connected by a six-foot in diameter pipe at the bottom of a 50-foot deep cylinder, which is being dug out underneath the freeway, a permit for which Shubert said they got from the Texas Department of Transportation in record time.

“It’s all part of the same puzzle to stop the flooding down here at the interstate,” Shubert said.

As well as stop the repetitive flooding of homes in the area, although some, like Gonzalez, had to give up their homes for that to happen.

“The last time the water went up that stair right there,” Gonzalez said. “I hope it helps with the other people that stay around here.”

Gonzalez said she got about double the $68,000 her home was appraised at. Total acquisition costs by EPWU were more than $4 million.

Once the project is complete, the ponds on both sides of the freeway will hold a total of 56 million gallons of water.