City of Charleston taking new approach to fix flooding issue

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD)- The Lowcountry experienced some major flooding after a heavy storm on Saturday.

While flooding isn’t anything new for our area, the City of Charleston says they’re taking a new approach to mitigating the problem.

General manager of Caviar and Bananas, Kevin Gao, says it was a total washout in front of his cafe on Ashley Avenue.

“Our street floods and it’s something we know about, and it’s something we try to prepare for,” Gao said.

However, Gao says they can only prepare so much and hope for the best when storms hit.

“When we don’t know it’s coming or how hard it’s going to be, we just hope the city does their due diligence,” Gao said.

It’s an age-old issue that Charleston’s new mayor and his executive team say needs a fresh set of solutions.

“The city needs to be more proactive in what they do when responding to floods and that involves us setting up an organizational structure that requires accountability,” City of Charleston’s Chief of Policy Officer, Logan McVey said.

One thing that Gao mentioned was shutting down flooded roads more quickly to avoid cars pushing waves of water into buildings. The city agrees.

“When we know that bad weather is coming, we need to start closing roads earlier. We need to get ahead of it; we need to be in front of people,” McVey said.

City officials also say there was no drain maintenance plan in place when they went into office.

They’re working to change that immediately.

“We have to have a stormwater maintenance plan. There’s currently not one in the city, and we’re working to get that information to establish. But a system where we go and check these drains. When we know there’s going to be a big storm, we should go make sure the drains in the areas that flood are clear. It’s that simple,” McVey said.

The city says they also plan to make a comprehensive plan creating more structure in tackling the flooding issue.