Columbia, SC (WLTX) - Eight months after the flood, the Columbia Canal remains dry at the point where it failed. Water Works Superintendent Clint Shealy says they're in the process of securing engineers to help come up with a permanent fix.
"Do the studying, the permitting and design of what the ultimate repair to the canal will be so that's where we are," said Shealy. "We're procuring the help that's then going to design and move forward with the construction of the improvements."
Not far from the canal, a reservoir pond just off of Interstate 26 is also dry. Before the flood, a project had started to expand the capacity, but Shealy says it was put on hold for three months.
"Right now we've got a volume of about 48 million gallons, the original volume was about 60 million gallons," said Shealy. "So this project is to clean out sediment that is deposited over time in the pond and restore it to its more original storage volume."
Shealy says the extra storage space would not have changed the water outage during the flood because that was an issue with distribution lines. What the additional storage will do is give the city another option when the river or canal water gets too muddy.
"What we're doing now is going to buy us more time in the event of an emergency, a raw water contamination issue, or God forbid, another canal failure, we would have more time to implement our plan," said Shealy.
The entire project cost $6.5 million and is expected to be completed in July.