CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Katlyn Garrett usually takes Airline Road to get to her job at Panjo’s in Corpus Christi.
She’s the manager there, and is just thankful Friday wasn’t a day she had to detour because of heavy rain flooding the street.
Just a few weeks ago, cars struggled to go down Airline near SPID. Garrett said usually the flooding doesn’t get too bad, but said a few weeks ago the street got at least 5 inches of rain.
“Since they redid it, yeah, that’s the worst that we’ve seen it," she said. "And it was supposed to stop when they redid all of Airline, but that didn’t happen, apparently.”
She said before the city of Corpus Christi finish the Airline improvement project, flooding was worse — but was still bad a few weeks ago.
She said sometimes she, or employees at Panjo’s, sometimes have to use other streets to get to work.
“It’s actually pretty easy if you come through SPID, or if you take McArdle — which is the backstreet — and come around," she said. "It’s not bad if you can avoid Airline.”
City of Corpus Christi assistant city manager Neiman Young said it’s important to keep trash out of the stormwater system, so the city installed new stormwater boxes and new stormwater lines as part of the Airline improvement project.
He said when Airline flooded a few weeks ago, flooding was caused by heavy debris like sandbags and construction material.
“The debris like that will lead to backups in the system or water spilling back onto the road, so we removed that material, and the line has worked perfectly since,” Young said.
Young said public-works crews clean out debris from drainage every day, and said it’s in their job description.
He said they would be on-call this weekend to clear out debris if needed.
He also said the city is putting $20 million towards increasing crews and street-sweepers.
Garrett, however, is hoping the city could do more to prevent flooding near her work.
“Hopefully they can come up with a new plan, maybe put some grates or something to keep it from getting stopped up and we won’t have this problem anymore,” she said.
