VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — If you go to Mount Trashmore, you can see the Windsor Woods Tie Gate Project now under construction, with a completion date of 2025.
It is designed to be part of the solution to prevent flooding from storms.
While Virginia Beach is not expecting flooding like what they have in Savannah Georgia, city Public Works Director LJ Hansen said people should be prepared.
“I don’t think we are going to see anything like that,” Hansen said. “What we are expecting is not a lot, but could last a couple of days.”
Hansen has already seen some flooding in the southern rivers.
“If the storm tracks west, and centers along Richmond, then we could get winds that blow out of the southern part of the city and will get more impacted than the northern part of the city.”
Preparing means making sure pump stations are good to go.
“When the water comes up because of the rain, it trips the pump station into pump mode, and it starts to pump,” Hansen said. “We want to make sure there is not a lot of debris against the screen that gets clogged and makes the pump station work harder.”
That water is then discharged through pipes about 2,000 feet out into the ocean.
The city gave us drone video of the Windsor Woods Tide Gate project at Mount Trashmore. When it is complete in 2025, it will prevent the flooding seen in 2016 from Hurricane Matthew.
“What the flood gates allow us to do is to drain some of our reservoirs inside the city during low tide before the storm gets here,” Hansen said, “and then we can close those gates and prevent the sea from coming in and stealing that capacity.”
Hansen also reminded drivers to not go through standing water.
“I don’t think this is going to be an event that we are going to have large-scale flooding,” Hansen said, “but if a road is flooded, we always ask don’t drive into flooded waters.”
Hansen also pointed out that Public Works doesn’t just jump into action when mother nature’s storming up the coast.
“This job for us, we are always doing work,” Hansen said. “Last year, we did over 7,000 feet of pipe cleaning. We are doing that all the time.”