Posted on March 29, 2018
By Aaron Randle, The Kansas City Star
Years ago, owners of businesses along a stretch of Southwest Boulevard might be in a panic over the National Weather Service’s forecast of light rain and possible flooding in the metro tonight.
But this area can rest somewhat assured, even with the light rain that’s expected to continue through noon Tuesday.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the final phase of a Turkey Creek flood prevention project that has solved the problem of severe flooding along Southwest Boulevard.
The $156 million project involved widening the channels that flow into the Turkey Creek tunnel and adding pipelines that diverted storm water away from Southwest Boulevard to the Kansas River. The completed project will restore full flow capacity to the nearly 100-year-old tunnel, engineers say.
The project area is located primarily along Interstate 35 and Southwest Boulevard. In 1998, flooding along Turkey Creek contributed to one of the worst floods in Kansas City’s history, resulting in 11 deaths and more than $50 million in damages.
“We restored the flow capacity of the tunnel and precluded a possible collapse of the I-35 bridge,” says John Grothaus, the chief of planning with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“There’s always theoretically a very large flood that can exceed the capacity of any flood project. But it will be a long time, I think, before they get a severe flood on the boulevard like they used to get in the past.”
The completion of the flood prevention project was solidified last June when U.S. Rep Emanuel Cleaver and city officials announced a federal funding commitment of $38 million. That money was supplemented by a city-match made possible by the $150 million in flood-control approved by voters in the April elections.
Source: The Kansas City Star
