The City of Wilmington and partner agencies held an open house Tuesday to show off plans for the wetland park they believe will help alleviate flooding issues in the Southbridge neighborhood.
The park has been in the works since 2010. According to Leah Kacanda, who manages the project for the City of Wilmington’s Office of Economic Development, construction is expected to begin next summer. She says it should take under a year.
Work on a sewer separation project to keep wastewater from mixing with stormwater during floods will start once the park is done, and should take one to two years.
The projects aim to decrease chronic flooding that’s plagued Southbridge for decades.
According to Kacanda, the Southbridge Civic Association has had a say in the aesthetic elements of the proposed park, like the entranceway, signage and a boardwalk that’s planned to run through it.
Marie Reed, head of the Southbridge Civic Association, is a lifelong resident.
“We’ve had flooding over here ever since I was little and before I was born,” said Reed. “To the point where we’ve had to evacuate our community, leave our homes.”
Sharmeka Thompson Baker, who has lived on Bradford St. in Southbridge for 14 years, says the flooding has caused her financial hardship.
“[A flood] actually totalled our cars—two cars in my household,” she said. “We were able to move our cars a few times. But one particular day, it wasn’t even raining really hard or anything like that that would make us think it was going to flood, but when we woke up the water was to the door handles on our cars. And so everyone on my block pretty much … all had their cars totalled in the flood.”
The City’s Kacanda says a recent study shows that the planned wetland park and sewer separation are projected to virtually eliminate nearby sewer backup in a ten-year flood— a major storm event.
“But we still have flooding areas in parts of Southbridge further to the East,” she said. “You know, the City’s going to continue working on that. The Wetland Park has never been the one panacea, it’s been part of a multipronged approach to address flooding in this community.”
Flooding in Southbridge is expected to intensify as sea levels rise.
A reportreleased this week by the Union of Concerned Scientists says over 90 percent of Delaware’s chronic flood risk is in areas where houses are valued below the state’s median home value.
