The City of Greensboro is exploring new ways to reduce and prevent flood damage.
In the past two years, flooding has become a lot more common in the city. Hurricanes in 2018 and summer storms in 2019 dumped buckets of rain on the Triad, repeatedly damaging homes and making streets impassable.
David Phlegar, with the city's Stormwater Management Division, says the trend doesn't appear to be reversing.
“Most of the infrastructure we have around the city is designed to handle about a 10-year storm, which is basically a certain volume of water," says Phlegar. "These extreme storms seem to somewhat regularly exceed the 10-year storm capacity these days.”
In a presentation to the city council last week, Phlegar outlined a number of initiatives his division is working on to minimize flood risks, including incorporating floodplain modeling.
“The model can predict what impacts that rainstorm will have," Phlegar says. "You can do it prior to a storm and we can do flood risk analysis or you can do it after a storm to recreate what happened with this particular rain event.”
Phlegar says they're also planning to ask the council to approve funding to repair stream banks and replace pipes and culverts.