DFW Leaders Discuss Flooding Problems, Solutions at UTA

Overflowing lakes, highways underwater and homes lined with sandbags are just some of the images now ingrained in the minds of North Texans – and especially in the minds of the city employees, who have spent the past month battling flooding.

“We’re going to see what improvements we can make so we can prevent this in the future,” said Dhruv Pendaya, Assistant Director of Flood Control Operations for the City of Dallas.

Many of those employees spent Thursday at UT-Arlington to discuss the challenges they faced in May and get input on possible solutions. The university is hosting a two-day conference that will tackle a number of water issues.

Grand Prairie Storm Water Utility Manager Stephanie Griffin was one of the attendees.

“It’s critical that we learn from mistakes and learn from things that went well,” said Griffin.

During her presentation, Griffin shared that the city is already tweaking some of its flood gauges, including one that is located near a mobile home park that had to be evacuated three times last month.

“The trigger was set too high and it didn’t give us time to respond,” said Griffin. “So we lowered that trigger so the fire department had more time to go door-to-door and make evacuations.”

Griffin said the meeting has already provided the help she was looking for. She learned the National Weather Service had certain kinds of flood forecasting tools that provide information the city would like.

“I’m anxious to set up a meeting with them,” said Griffin.

Pendaya and other officials from Dallas came to the meeting to learn about new flood technology and to find out how other cities handled high water.

“They may be doing something that is better than us,” said Pendaya. “We’d like to learn from that.”

During his presentation, Pendaya said the city’s levees and storm water systems did a pretty good job keeping the city safe despite the historic rainfall. He did acknowledge some gaps, however, that the city is now addressing.

Specifically, they’re looking at adding a pump station in southwest Dallas, which they believe will prevent Loop 12 from flooding in the future.

“I think that is going to be a priority,” said Pendaya.

Experts at the conference recommended cities also start looking at ways to conserve water in the region’s now full reservoirs to slow down any return to drought conditions.
 

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