Simpsonville city leaders approve storm water fund to mitigate flood issues

SIMPSONVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – Simpsonville city leaders are working on a plan to eliminate flood zones across the area after approving a storm water fund to address concerns this fall.

Simpsonville city councilmember Tim Pinkerton said the council set aside $250,000 for a stormwater management fund earlier this year.

City leaders told 7NEWS Durbin Creek and Rocky Creek are the two biggest areas of concern for them in the city. People who live in those neighborhoods were threatened when Helene tore through the area.

“That’s a problem, and that’s the sort of thing that I’m concerned about and probably most of the city is concerned about, is that some of the older neighborhoods just don’t have the capacity to take on some of the stormwater issues we have because of growth,” said Pinkerton.

Pinkerton said next steps are to conduct storm water studies that’ll show them how they can improve infrastructure and drainage in the city’s older neighborhoods.

“What we want it to do is be able to point out some areas, some we know are concerns, what we could do to fix those, give us some sort of monetary amount that would tell us, this is what it would take to fix it, and then we could in turn decide in our budget in the future how we want to address those issues,” Pinkerton added.

Pinkerton said all new developments are required to have a 100-year floodplain, which takes their risk of flooding down to one percent.

Pinkerton added that city leaders are actively seeking out a grant to be able to conduct storm water studies. However, he said he doesn’t expect to see any movement on that until next year.

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