City Council hears update on floodgate project

Oct. 6—LUMBERTON — As the Lumberton City Council approved a contract amendment regarding the project to build a floodgate under Interstate 95 near VFW Road, Public Works Director Rob Armstrong gave the Council a detailed update on the status of the project, which has seen some changes in recent months.

The exact location has been changed numerous times as the result of coordination with the N.C. Department of Transportation as it begins the widening and elevation of I-95.

"The floodgate project is becoming increasingly complicated with the I-95 widening project going on — I guess that was to be expected," Armstrong said. "We have gone back and forth numerous time with the I-95 design build team, but we believe the end project will be beneficial to not only the I-95 project but to the floodgate. As a result of this there's been a lot of coordination added to the floodgate project and the floodgate footprint has been moved at least three times, on the western side. We moved it from one side to the other, then we've moved it three times on the western side since we started this. I do believe we've found a permanent location for the floodgate as far as the footprint."

These changes resulted in a change to the city's coordination fee which was originally in the contract of engineering and architectural firm Atkins Global at a cost of $77,652. This will be paid for from funds allocated to the project from the N.C. Golden Leaf Foundation and legislative appropriations.

"This $77,000 is only going to cover the revised planning and design," Armstrong said. "It has gotten very complicated; this doesn't include our interaction with the railroad, but I believe we have finally come to a set design that the DOT will accept and we believe the railroad will be OK with it too. We hope to start submitting this to dam safety permitting within the next 60 days, with a partial complete design for them to give us a cursory review up front."

Councilman John Cantey asked Armstrong whether the city continues to have enough funding to complete the project; the cost has risen from early estimates of $3 million to a total of over $5 million now, due to project complications and broader increased costs.

Armstrong answered that the city "appears to have ample funding," between money received from the N.C. Office of Recovery & Resiliency, which is part of Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief funds secured by the city; Golden Leaf grant funds; the U.S. Economic Development Agency; and direct appropriations from the state legislature.

"The issue is time — we really can't move on this project until we coordinate it with the I-95 project; even when we've got that kind of settled, we have to submit to North Carolina Dam Safety (Commission) and their review will be very thorough," Armstrong said. "There will be changes that have to come back and forth. We don't anticipate this project starting construction until well into 2023."

The construction will take approximately five months once it begins.

The floodgate project is one of numerous efforts by the city to reduce floodwaters in the event of a future major weather event after the local impact of Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018. Water from the flooded Lumber River flowed through the area, underneath I-95 toward and into South and West Lumberton during both storms.

While the project has been delayed from its original timetable — when the idea was first discussed, a 2021 or 2022 completion date was discussed as realistic — the temporary earthen barrier built at the location after the impacts of Matthew and Florence remains in place and Armstrong is confident in its ability to protect the city in the event of future flooding events.

"There's comfort in knowing that we have the temporary barrier still in place that can be implemented and closed there, so that's not going away," Armstrong said. "Even during construction, most of that will remain, or as much as possible will remain, so there will be protection until the permanent floodgate is (finished)."

The project complications are exacerbated by the fact new bridges will be built at the site as part of the I-95 elevating and widening project; the interstate will shift slightly west from its current location, with new bridges being built before the existing bridges can be torn down.

"All that activity going on is complicated," Armstrong said. "Not just the actual bridge, but the ability to stage equipment, material in such a confined space, plus keep the railroad going and two lanes of traffic in each direction."

The current setup requires about a six- to eight-hour timeframe to implement closure of the opening under the interstate at the location, Armstrong said. Once the floodgate is finished, this will be accomplished in "a matter of minutes."

While Hurricane Ian ultimately did not cause the city any flooding issues, the buildup to the storm before it impacted the Southeast last week gave the city a "very good lesson" on its coordination with the DOT and railroad companies in the event the area has to be sealed in a future flooding event before the floodgate is completed.

"Fortunately it was not much of a rain event, but it did give us a chance to go through the motions with the railroad and to also coordinate with DOT and make sure that we had the needed supplies on hand to close that if we needed to; we didn't have to, but everybody kind of worked together in the coordination leading up to that," Armstrong said.

While the DOT will have to move some of the dirt near the interstate overpass as part of its project, the city is taking that into account as it plans to maintain the temporary safety net while the permanent structure is built, Armstrong said.

Councilmen Cantey and Chris Howard raised questions about whether the water diverted by the floodgate will affect other areas of the city, even as it protects the areas of South and West Lumberton nearby.

Armstong said that on the river side of the floodgate, conditions likely would not change; those locations are in a "very deep" flood zone and many structures are uninhabited already after the previous two storms. On the "protected side" of the floodgate, east of the interstate, "it still rains and water comes on the protected side; that water would be allowed to be discharged by pumping platform that will built in with the floodgate," Armstrong said.

"The outcry has been about water flowing into other areas," Howard said. "As you stated, the hydraulic study which you're doing and are still doing some work on will relieve them of that tension they have. ... They've had that fear we're dumping water from southwest Lumberton over on them. And that's not the case. So that needs to be clearly defined so that other areas of the city can know that water is not being dumped on them and the steady flow is going downstream, instead of piling it up on them."

Armstrong said the intent of the project is "to put the hydraulics into motion the way it was originally designed," with internal canals around the city collecting water, taking it from the river until it can flow downstream.

"The closure at the railroad has always been planned," Armstrong said. "It was just planned as a stack of sandbags, which proved to be insufficient. So the hydraulics had always included this area to be closed and internal drainage to be handled through these canals, and the external drainage, I'll call it, really hasn't changed. We're just changing the way we're closing the area where the railroad track is; instead of sandbags, we'll have the permanent gate."

Chris Stiles can be reached at 910-816-1977 or by email at cstiles@robesonian.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @StilesOnSports.