CAYCE, S.C. — For months, even years, the Cayce Avenues Drainage Project has been under construction. As for where it stands today, it's still under construction.
Hundreds of homes in Cayce will be less prone to flooding come this summer. That's because according to the city's deputy manager, Jim Crosland, they're hoping to finish phase III by June.
Crosland explains phase I began in early 2020 and ended in 2021. Phase II construction happened in 2022 and phase III has been underway for the last two weeks. He adds phase I took about nine to twelve months, phase II, about nine months and he explains phase III should be a shorter amount of time because they don't have to excavate as deep.
Phase I was at Blake Drive, phase II at Delessaline Drive and phase III, what construction crews are working on now, is at Axtell Drive.
"We all have storm water issues and the city wants to help our citizens. So citizens have some concerns about some yard flooding and some issues like that and especially around State Street and Knox Abbott where we have seen flooding. And it's not the three inches of rain that you get totally over the weekend. It's the three inches that you get in 20 minutes and that's the issues that we're trying to tend to," Crosland said.
Locals tell News 19 noise and construction has been a headache, but that they're excited to benefit from the result of it.
Sondra Wieland lives at the house right next to where workers excavated pipe for phase II.
"It was just messy, inconvenient. I liked it because we didn't have any traffic coming through here, but it felt invasive in terms of me personally. But in terms of the work that they've done, I think that it's going to be a good thing. Ultimately, it's supposed to help the flooding on the upper streets because it all drains this way," Sondra Wieland, Cayce resident said.
In each phase, they're replacing 48 inch pipes with 72 inch ones to let the storm water have someplace to go.
After getting $750,000 in grant money for this project from the Rural Infrastructure Authority and SCDOT, the city explains they hope to get more grants like it to continue to work on other areas prone to flooding in Cayce.
According to the deputy city manager, if you want to keep track of progress, there's an Avenues Storm Water Facebook Page.