ORANGEBURG COUNTY, S.C. — A $5.2 million grant from the South Carolina Office of Resilience will help with stormwater and drainage improvements in Orangeburg County.
About $3.5 million will be used for work on Ellis Avenue and Warren Street in Holly Hill.
County Administrator Harold Young said that although this will make a difference, residents must ensure they have flood insurance.
“That’s going to go a long way to alleviating flash flooding in some of these areas that don’t have adequate drainage," said Young. “You have to keep up with where your structures are located, if they are in a flood zone or not, if you're required to have flood insurance, things of that nature because no matter what we do or how much work we do no work or engineering can defeat mother nature."
"So, by doing the upgrades does not mean it is never going to flood again," Young added. "It just means that we have significantly reduced the probability of that happening again.”
Clifton Yates, who has lived on Ellis Avenue for 35 years, said these changes are more than overdue.
“I mean, anybody riding through here after a rain would say, 'Oh, I wouldn’t ever want to live here,'" said Yates. “There are places, with the amount of water coming through here, [that] will actually wash a child away. And that’s in the center of town two blocks from the courthouse."
"There is something wrong with that for taxpayers," he added. "The taxpayers shouldn’t have to wonder if their kids are going to be safe walking home from school or playing in the yard or whatever, you know?”
The city of Orangeburg plans to use $1.7 million to work on Adden Street, replacing old pipes.
“We have a number of streets that are prone to flooding anytime we get heavy rains," Orangeburg City Administrator Sidney Evering said. "Primarily, I think it's due to stormwater drainage issues. We have several old pipes -- old terracotta pipes from what I’m told -- that have seen their better days; they have started to crumble and are not feeding the water out like it should."
“We have several homes and apartments that flood; we have folks that oftentimes drive through and, unfortunately, their vehicles get stalled out," Evering added. "This is certainly a public safety issue that we are happy to work with the state to get addressed.”
Work is expected to begin in late fall.