CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — “I have two kids, so I had to go somewhere else with them to my cousin’s house,” Nidia Quiroz said, thinking back to a time when she was forced to leave her house in the Los Encinos neighborhood back in 2010 due to flooding from the nearby La Volla Creek.
She still has damage to her home at the bottom of her kitchen sink that’s been there for over a decade.
“You couldn’t even go inside that night it happened to get, to try and see what was still there, like pictures and everything, important things,” Quiroz said.
She said a lot of people moved from the area after 2010 and are still worried their house will get flooded, even though it hasn’t flooded as bad since then.
The City of Corpus Christi is now in the design phase of building a stormwater detention pond to help alleviate flooding at the Las Colonias, Molina, and Los Encinos neighborhoods where La Volla Creek's flooding primarily affects. The detention pond will be located near Gavilan Street.
“What it does is water will flow into it and be stored and be released slowly during a rainfall event,” Jeff Edmonds, the director of engineering services for the City of Corpus Christi described.
He said the pond will be about 120 acres and will be able to hold about 200 million gallons. He said the water stored in the pond will be released slowly into La Volla Creek and ultimately Oso Creek.
District 3 Councilman Roland Barrera, who is in charge of the area that La Volla Creek runs through, said the pond will also benefit the neighborhoods monetarily.
“Had we not done this detention pond, then their flood insurance rates will go up, so this helps to reduce the flood insurance rates for all the residents in those neighborhoods,” Councilman Barrera said.
He said the detention pond will be expanded into a park when the stormwater isn’t in it. He said construction on the pond will begin in October and end at the beginning of next year.
