PORT ARTHUR, Texas — For more than a decade, engineers have been trying to find money and build a design for a pump station that can drain more than a million gallons of water per minute.
In a few months, the years of work will bring the project to life with the completion of the Alligator Bayou Project.
When rain falls, flood fears rise for many in Southeast Texas. Now, it seems like paranoia is the new normal for many.
Allen Sims is the vice president for water resources at LJA Engineering in Beaumont.
"This is probably the single-largest project that's occurred in the last 30 years in the system," Sims said.
Drainage District 7 hired his firm to complete the Alligator Bayou Project.
"We're adding about 60 percent of the pumping capacity to the very last pump station at the end of the system," Sims said.
DD7 Supervisor Ronnie Hollier said Harvey helped reinforce why the project is so important.
"I personally didn't think anything like that could happen, but obviously, never say never," Hollier said.
Construction started on the massive pumping station in 2015.
It's located off Highway 82 in Port Arthur near the Valero refinery. It's designed to pump water out of canals and ditches into the intracoastal waterway.
"The project started back in the Mid 80s, looking for low-flow pumping to handle just daily flows," Sims said.
Money was the primary obstacle for a long time. The federal government left
DD7 in limbo, but a grant made it possible.
"After Ike in 2008, we got a grant," Sims said.
That led to the $62 million project getting underway. It's meant to almost double the Alligator Bayou station's pumping capacity.
"Really, we're taking it to an almost 15-inch rainfall is about what we can handle. Where before it was set up for about an eight inch," Sims said.
Now the drainage district will be able to manage 15 inches of rain in a 24-hour span.
"That's a tremendous increase, it is," Sims said.
Before a major storm, the new pumps will lower the water levels in canals and ditches.
Think of it as providing extra room for all of the rain water.
Seventy percent of the runoff and rain water from Port Arthur and Mid-County ends up in the pumps at Alligator Bayou.
"This existing cofferdam will be pulled out. The water will come in, this will have a rake system to keep trash out of the pumps," Sims said.
Water will then run into six new pumps inside the annex.
"The pump is an eight-foot diameter pipe with a propeller at the bottom that will lift the water up. It's 30 feet deep, picks the water up and discharges it our toward the Intracoastal Canal. There's six pumps, each pump has 250,000 gallons per minute pumping capacity for a million and half gallons a minute total for the station," Sims said.
Before this project, the existing pump station next door could manage a 25 year storm event.
The new one should be able to handle a 100-year storm, but even the new pumps couldn't have saved the area during Harvey.
"The existing station can handle about 5,000 cubic feet of water per second. The new station will be able to handle 8,500 cubic feet per second. There was almost 30,000 cubic feet per second that was getting to that station during Harvey," Sims said.
Construction is more than 95 percent complete.
"Really, the biggest part is going to be site clean-up," Sims said.
Sims said the new pumps will be ready for hurricane season, hopefully providing some peace of mind to people who don't want to worry every time it rains.
Jefferson County Drainage District 7 is hoping to have the pump station up and running before June.
The old station, which has been used since 1979, will remain on and serve as a backup for emergencies.
