Neighbors seek county help after stormwater floods their streets

The Longhord Road neighborhood was hit by torrential rains and flooding waters just last week, bringing problems neighbors said they had not faced before.

Hoping to stop the rushing water, neighbors met with the Dona Ana County Manager Friday to look for short and long term solutions, like cleaning out a drainage canal.

“It’s private property, they gotta talk to the owner, make sure that the owner is approved and the engineers have to go out. Also, another thing is they don’t want to divert all the water to another neighborhood,” said Anna Medina, a Longhorn Road neighbor.

To prevent that the county will have to give the water a safe place to go, one option mentioned in the meeting is building a new ponding area to keep water from reaching these houses in the first place.

“There’s a big piece of property where they can do a ponding. But, they’ll have to look into it and see if they can purchase it. So, the ponding is where, all the water will divert to there,” Medina.

Longer term solutions will need work from public representatives to find a way to protect these houses from flooding water.

The neighbors so far are grateful that a conversation has started, and said things are starting to move in the right direction.

“We never had anybody out there helping us, nobody would even go out and give us sandbags,” Medina said.

County representatives will be going to the neighborhood out next week to take a look and examine the area to find the best long-term solutions. One possible solution could be a dam, pending legislative approval as a capital improvement.