Local Flooding Continues

$4 Million Partial Fix Proposed

    Five inches of rain on the morning of April first resulted in dozens of Central homes flooding, most of them for the second time in a year. While much of last August’s flooding was due to record levels of the Comite and Amite rivers, last week’s flooding was entirely due to problems with Central’s stormwater drainage system.
    In the wake of last week’s flooding, Mayor Shelton proposes spending $4 million of the city’s cash reserves as a partial fix for the problem. Mayor Shelton has called a special City Council meeting this Friday to ask that $4 million of Central’s Drainage Emergency Fund be appropriated to partially solve local drainage problems. The city has a total projected availability in the Drainage Fund of approximately $4.7 million.
        A similar rain event last spring, months before the great flood of 2016, resulted in local flooding as well, and was also unrelated to river crests. In July of 2014 heavy rains flooded areas of Central, prompting then newly elected Mayor Shelton to comment, “we can and will do major improvements to deal with the drainage.”